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An Art Philosopher's Cabinet 
 
 Being Salient Passages from the Works on 
 Comparative -Esthetics of 
 
 George Lansing Raymond, LMX>. 
 
 Fonner Professor of ^Esthetic Criticism in Princeton University 
 
 Selected and Arranged According to Subject by 
 Marion Mills Miller, Litt^D* 
 
 Editor of "TIic dassics—Greck and Latin/' etc. 
 
 With Illustrations 
 
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 New York London 
 
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Chief Source of the Selections 
 
 A System of GDmparative -Esthetics 
 
 By George Lansing Raymond, L.H.D* 
 
 I. Art in Theory 
 II. The Representative Significance of Form 
 
 III. Poetry as a Representative Art 
 
 IV. Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as 
 
 Representative Arts 
 
 V. The Genesis of Art Form 
 
 VI. Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, 
 together with music as a representative 
 Art 
 
 VII. Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color 
 IN Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture 
 
 VIII. The Essentials of Esthetics: Being a Com- 
 pendium OF the System, Designed for a 
 Text-Book 
 
 Published fay 
 G* ?♦ Putnam's Sons> New York and London 
 
 m 
 
 3G5884 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The epigram, that most convincing form of argument, 
 while it effectively destroys unsound opinions prevalent 
 among people who let some one else do their thinking, may 
 itself become the mother of error when it is in turn accepted 
 without examination as to its positive truth. 
 
 Of this the popular epigrammatic definition of critics, 
 so effectively used by Benjamin Disraeli in his novel of 
 Lothair, as "the men who have failed in literature and art," 
 is an example. It attacks unwarranted pretense on the 
 part of those assuming to be authorities in these subjects, 
 and unquestioning acceptance of them as such by the 
 general public, and, at the same time, appeals by its slur 
 to the element of malice latent in the human breast which 
 springs gleefully into expression when that which is con- 
 ceived to be a mask concealing real character and motives is 
 removed. For these reasons, this epigram has been suc- 
 cessful in its purpose where a plain statement of the need of 
 examining the credentials of those sitting in judgment 
 would have made no impression. 
 
 The error which the epigram propagates is in its sweeping 
 assertion that all those who assume to be critics are failures 
 as creative artists, — a patent untruth, but accepted for the 
 sake of the slur without regard to the injurious effect that 
 it may have on uninformed minds. Thus this epigram has 
 been popularly exalted to a postulate; qualification to 
 criticize has been accepted as proving inability to create; 
 and, as an inevitable corollary, criticism has been deemed 
 an inferior form of writing, indeed practically worthless. 
 
 To confute these errors, a plain statement of facts show- 
 ing that great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and great 
 poets like Coleridge have been supreme critics does not 
 seem all that is demanded. Those who surrender to the 
 force of epigrams appear often to bring about situations 
 from which none but the champions of other epigrams can 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 deliver them. There is a sense, therefore, in which it may 
 be said that the false conceptions just mentioned required 
 a master of epigram to expose them, even if he had to do 
 this at that cost to truth which is always incurred when 
 answering a fool according to his folly. 
 
 Oscar Wilde in his most brilliant essay on The Decay of 
 Lying, exploded the vital element of the epigram in ques- 
 tion — namely, the deduction that criticism is an inferior 
 form of writing — by frankly granting the failure of critics 
 as creative artists, and boldly claiming that this was due to 
 their special ability in a higher field of literature. Criticism 
 he declared, supporting his statement with great ingenuity, 
 was the supreme order of literary composition. 
 
 The concession that he made was, perhaps, necessary to 
 secure the essential quality of surprise in his succeeding 
 epigrammatic presentation ; but it has proved very injurious 
 to certain subservient minds ever ready to follow an original 
 genius who proclaims himself an authority. These follow- 
 ers, without examining Wilde's argument for positive and 
 permanent truth, indeed not desiring to do so, since in- 
 genuity is more attractive to them than wisdom, have 
 accepted his impudent assertion at its face value, and have 
 found license to pose as critics without qualification for the 
 office and with no other thought than to make their judg- 
 ments seem striking and plausible. Their utterances are 
 unsound and insincere, and effective only for the destruction 
 of accepted beliefs, true as well as false. Lacking the con- 
 structive ability to create a new pantheon in place of the 
 idols overthrown, they have deified the hammer which their 
 master, the supreme iconoclast, taught them to wield, — the 
 two-headed paradox as destructive in the rebound as in the 
 blow. Indeed, one of them, George Bernard Shaw, too 
 proud to acknowledge discipleship to Wilde, but, neverthe- 
 less, a member of the cult, and, in fact, its chief living repre- 
 sentative, has attempted to develop the principle of the 
 paradox into a working philosophy for constructive as well as 
 destructive purposes. This is more than was ever con- 
 templated by Wilde himself, who was not serious even in 
 smashing things, but rather wanton, breaking old and 
 sacred windows in the social temple just to hear the glass 
 crash, and not to let in the pure air and sunlight — although 
 this was, happily, often the result. 
 
 Shaw's doctrine of contrariety that attempts to find 
 
PREFACE Vii 
 
 wisdom in palpable absurdity, and to show that the ap^ 
 parently impracticable method is the only sure means to 
 achievement, is most patent, and hence ineffective for evil, 
 in politics and economics. This is shown by the general 
 contempt that has dubbed him Bernhardi Shaw because of 
 his recent criticisms of Great Britain for not defending 
 Belgium by leaving it defenseless, and by the repudiation 
 on the part of even his fellow socialists of his late theory that 
 equality of income is practicable without equality of oppor- 
 tunity to secure the income. 
 
 It is in the field of art and letters, however, that his 
 principle is most subtle, because there it is based upon his 
 elusive personality, and hence is most subversive of sound 
 principles. He is certainly not one of those critics who have 
 failed in literature. As a dramatist, he has been eminently 
 successful. But these very facts tend to uphold Wilde's 
 contention that such a man cannot be a great literary critic; 
 and one who wanted to confirm this conclusion could point 
 out that, perhaps, no writer to such an extent as Shaw has 
 ever adapted his general philosophy of composition, es- 
 pecially play- writing, to his own special abilities and limita- 
 tions. Shaw has done this with such success that, by his 
 method, Shakespeare is condemned and he himself com- 
 mended. The first requisite for acceptance of his views is 
 acceptance of himself, with all the whimsical contradictions 
 of his nature, as the ideal artist. 
 
 The sensible view of the relation of the critical work of an 
 author to his creative achievements — a perfectly natural 
 connection which has been artfully exalted into a subject 
 for debate — is that creative ability is a desirable qualifica- 
 tion for criticism when the critic is not an egotist, but is a 
 detriment to him when he has his own case continually in 
 mind as a standard for judging other creative artists. Criti- 
 cism must, first of all, be impartial. Success as a creative 
 artist is simply a conclusive proof of one kind of ability. 
 Nor is the fact that a writer has abandoned creative for 
 critical work evidence of a lack of creative ability. On the 
 contrary it may be a proof of it. A man who has worked out 
 for himself, and demonstrated to his own satisfaction, 
 principles of art, if the altruism of the teacher is strong in 
 him, may sacrifice the joy of creation for the higher pleasure 
 of imparting his knowledge to others. This was the case 
 with John Ruskin; in his youth he was a painter of promise. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 yet gave up his career as an artist with pencil and brush 
 impelled by the irresistible desire to teach, combined with a 
 consciousness of ability to do this through his mastery of 
 the artistry of lang^uage. 
 
 Wilde's contention that criticism is itself a kind of 
 creation, while untrue, is nevertheless valuable inasmuch 
 as it strikes at the truth. Criticism is one of the factors of 
 creation, but not creation itself. In the language of philo- 
 sophy, interpretation of the message of a work of art to the 
 world is an effective cause of the fulfilment of the final 
 cause or purpose of the work. The whole truth is that both 
 creator and interpreter are essential agents to this end, and, 
 in this respect, both deserve honor. The precedence of the 
 one or the other must be determined, if at all, by comparison 
 of the relative position which each holds in his own pro- 
 fession. But comparisons are particularly odious, and, as a 
 rule, wholly useless, when instituted between persons of 
 different pursuits. 
 
 The rounded work of a critic is both destructive and 
 constructive, the former, in its office of preparation for 
 upbuilding, being in character no less creative than the 
 latter. For effectiveness there must be fixed purpose in the 
 work from the beginning, and a determined and original 
 method of achieving the ultimate object. In short, a true 
 critic must be a philosopher in the domain of his activity. 
 
 And when, as in the case of art, this domain is a broad 
 and diversified one, containing many separate fields, each 
 distinct in character, and as such generally localized, but 
 with merging and ill-defined boundaries, and with common 
 but differently employed riparian rights to the streams of 
 influence which flow through them all, the critic must be 
 a comparative philosopher in particular, if he would be 
 practically helpful. 
 
 His requirements do not stop here. Not alone must he 
 be true to himself, to his own abilities and attainments in 
 the choice of his subjects, and be true to the nature of the 
 subject itself in treating it, but he must be able to present 
 truth to others in a form suited to their understanding and 
 acceptance. In order to meet this requirement, it seems 
 well-nigh essential that he should have had a certain amount 
 of experience as a teacher of at least some of the principles 
 of the branch to which he has devoted himself. 
 , If our contention be justified, if the ideal critic in general, 
 
PREFACE IX 
 
 and of art in particular, be one who is himself a creator of 
 artistic forms, with inborn ability cultivated by study and 
 practice; and be also a philosopher of analytic and synthetic 
 powers reinforced by wide knowledge of his subject; and 
 have had experience in the work of explaining and presenting 
 what he has to impart, we are in possession of a standard 
 by which to judge any particular critic under discussion. 
 
 We believe that George Lansing Raymond, the author of 
 the only complete system of art-interpretation that has 
 yet been produced in any country, — complete because of 
 its analytic and synthetic unity, treating its theme equally 
 in its historical and theoretical aspects, and applying identi- 
 cal principles to both subject-matter and form as used in 
 every one of the higher arts, — is a critic who conforms to 
 this standard in each of these regards, and with an unusual 
 degree of excellence in all of them. He won distinction as a 
 poet and orator in early life, and has constantly increased 
 his reputation since then. For poetry, he has chosen themes 
 that are fitted for poetic treatment, and presented them in 
 a style whose lucid artistry, by the aptness with which it 
 performs its function, not only enhances the thought but 
 acquires reflected value in its own assthetic character. 
 Some of his poems are dramatic in form, and in these as 
 well as in other slight, perhaps, but successful excursions 
 into regions demanding ability to interpret human nature 
 and to portray personal character, he has not been found 
 wanting, whether judged by the inferences of common sense, 
 or by the canons of criticism; while his essays, addresses, 
 and even technical treatises on aesthetics and various other 
 subjects which he has taught, all reveal, in their natural yet 
 original methods of presentation, the literary artist. 
 
 In more direct, though not more essential, relation to his 
 work as a critic, it may be claimed that Dr. Raymond has 
 eminently the mental habit of a philosopher. A reader of a 
 single book of his, or even a chapter, will be impressed by 
 the manner in which he resolves forms existent in art into 
 their essential elements, and from these reconstructs the 
 ideal forms; and a student who has examined his entire 
 system will realize, as never before, the interrelation of all 
 the arts and their common foundation on broad physical 
 and psychological principles, which may be harmonized in a 
 general aesthetic philosophy applicable to every branch of 
 the subject. As evidence of such a realization by readers of 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 even single volumes, we quote from a review of "The 
 Representative Significance of Form," in The Scotsman 
 of Edinburgh: "Professor Raymond goes so deep into 
 causes as to explore the subconscious and the unconscious 
 mind for a solution of his problems, and eloquently to 
 range through the conceptions of religion, science, and 
 metaphysics in order to find fixed principles of taste." 
 And this, from a review of "The Genesis of Art-Form," in 
 the Philadelphia Press: "It is impossible to withhold 
 one's admiration from a treatise which exhibits in such a 
 rare degree the qualities of philosophic criticism." This 
 also from the Portland (Me.) Transcript's review of "Pro- 
 portion and Harmony": "It is scientific and mathe- 
 matical to the core without destroying the beauty of the 
 creations it analyzes. It is, above all, logical and methodi- 
 cal, maintaining its argument and carrying along from one 
 subject to another the deductions which have preceded." 
 And this from the Portland Oregonian, in speaking of 
 "Rhythm and Harmony": "The analysis is, at times, so 
 subtle as to be almost beyond the reach of words, but the 
 author's grasp of his subject nowhere slackens, and the 
 quiet flow of the style remains unclouded in expressing 
 even the most intricate phases of his argument." A re- 
 viewer in the New York Times tells us that: "In a spirit 
 at once scientific and that of the true artist, he pierces 
 through the manifestations of art to their sources, and 
 shows the relations, intimate and essential, between paint- 
 ing, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture." 
 
 As a final qualification for the great work to which Pro- 
 fessor Raymond has devoted the larger part of his life may 
 be noted his experience as a student and his activities as a 
 teacher of the subjects. A personal appreciation appearing 
 in the New York Times in connection with a review of one 
 of his books contains the following: "We consider Pro- 
 fessor Raymond to possess something like an ideal equip- 
 ment for the line of work he has entered upon. His own 
 poetry is genuine and delicately constructed, his apprecia- 
 tions are true to high ideals, and his power of scientific 
 analysis is unquestionable." .... He "was known, 
 when a student at Williams, as a musician and a poet — 
 the latter because of taking, in his freshman year, a prize 
 in verse over the whole college. After graduating in this 
 country, he went through a course in aesthetics with Pro- 
 
PREFACE a 
 
 fessor Vischer of the University of Tubingen, and also with 
 Professor Curtius at the time when that historian of Greece 
 was spending several hours a week with his pupils among 
 the marbles of the Berlin Museum. Subsequently, be- 
 lieving that all the arts are, primarily, developments of 
 different forms of expression through the tones and move- 
 ments of the body. Professor Raymond made a thorough 
 study, chiefly in Paris, of methods of cultivating and using 
 the voice in both singing and speaking, and of representing 
 thought and emotion through postures and gestures. It is 
 a result of these studies that he afterwards developed, first, 
 into his methods of teaching elocution and literature" 
 (as embodied in his Orator's Manual and The Writer) "and 
 later into his aesthetic system. ... A Princeton man has 
 said of him that he has as keen a sense for a false poetic 
 element as a bank expert for a counterfeit note; and a New 
 York model who posed for him, when preparing illustra- 
 tions for one of his books, said that he was the only man 
 that he had ever met who could invariably, without experi- 
 ment, tell him at once what posture to assimie in order to 
 represent any required sentiment." 
 
 In his early manhood, Professor Raymond taught oratory, 
 rhetoric, and English literature in his Alma Mater, 
 Williams College; and, in the fulness of his mental powers, 
 founded and, for many years, conducted the department of 
 Oratory and ^Esthetic Criticism at Princeton University. 
 In later life, he retired from the class-room, and, taking up 
 residence in Washington, lectured before the George 
 Washington University and various societies in that city 
 upon his system of aesthetic philosophy which by this time 
 he had completely developed. He is now a resident of Los 
 Angeles, where, in the congenial climate of the ** American 
 Italy," his mind is still actively engaged in recording in 
 book-form the thoughts which he has derived from a life 
 full of research, and rich in experience as a teacher and 
 writer. At present he is engaged on a work having to do 
 with ethics — a subject which he will undoubtedly approach 
 from the direction, among others, of aesthetics. This is a 
 view-point which sadly needs a sane and sincere exposition 
 after its gross mistreatment at the hands of Oscar Wilde and 
 others belonging, more or less, to the same school — a cult 
 which has brought a genuinely philosophical subject into 
 much popular disrepute. 
 
zu 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 It must not be inferred from the foregoing that Dr. 
 Raymond has excluded from his former works consideration 
 of the bearing of art upon human conduct. On the con- 
 trary, his books are full of it. It is this that makes them so 
 vital, — so unlike all other works save Ruskin*s of the same 
 order. In the comparative assthetics, the soul as well as 
 the body of art is made the subject of interpretation at 
 every point. 
 
 This latter fact would furnish a sufficient reason, perhaps, 
 for the preparation of a collection of extracts as in the 
 present volume. But the book is not designed for those 
 interested exclusively in any one phase of art or its influence. 
 The thoroughness, and consequent comprehensiveness, of 
 Professor Raymond's discussions have placed a great deal 
 of what he has said practically beyond the reach of many 
 busy people who cannot take from other necessary occupa- 
 tions the time needed for studying his system as a whole. 
 The editor is convinced that readers of this kind, whether 
 artists, poets, art-lovers, critics, editors, teachers, or 
 preachers, will welcome an opportunity afforded them for 
 becoming acquainted, in a very few moments, with any one 
 of the more important of Professor Raymond's contribu- 
 tions to any phase of the general subject. 
 
 Similarly selected quotations from Professor Raymond's 
 poetical works have already been published in a book 
 entitled A Poet's Cabinet. To this, the present book, 
 giving extracts from his prose works, forms a companion, 
 the two cyclopedias supplying comprehensive mental and 
 spiritual co-ordinates whereby the reader may be enabled to 
 test not only the personality of the author but the com- 
 pleteness and applicability of his philosophy of art and life, 
 and may be guided and inspired by their suggestions. 
 
 Marion Mills Miller. ' 
 
 The Authors Cluby New York. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 I. The Author .... Frontispiece 
 
 From a photograph 
 
 The following have been selected from the many hundreds in Professor Raymond's 
 volumes on account, mainly, of the self-explanatory testimony which they all furnish to 
 the truth of one of the most important of his fundamental propositions. This is that the 
 primary and most universal endeavor of the imagination when influenced by the artistic 
 tendency is to form an image that is made to seem a unity by comparing and grouping 
 together effects that, when seen or heard, are recognized to be wholly or partially alike. 
 
 II. A Maori Festival, New Zealand . 
 
 III. Kaffir Station, Africa 
 
 IV. Type of an Assyrian Square 
 V. Poutou Temple, Ningpo, China . 
 
 VI. Taj Mahal, India .... 
 
 VII. St. Mark's, Venice, and St. Sophia, Constan 
 tinople ...... 
 
 VIII. Cologne Cathedral .... 
 
 IX. St. Isaac's, Petrograd 
 
 X. Doorway of a Church in Jak, Hungary 
 
 XI. The Descent from the Cross, by Rubens 
 
 XII. The Death of Ananias, by Raphael 
 
 XIII. The Laocoon Group of Sculpture 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 32 
 
 64 
 
 96 
 
 128 
 
 160 
 
 224 
 256 
 288 
 
 352 
 
 384 
 
 aou 
 
An Art-Philosopher's Cabinet. 
 
 ACCENT (see also quantity, rhythm, tune, and verse). 
 
 Some may doubt whether (in poetry) accent is the basis of 
 rhythm and tune, but it is really about all that the majority 
 of men know of either. With exceptions, the fewness of 
 which confirms the rule, all of our English words of more 
 than one syllable must necessarily be accented in one way ; 
 and all of our articles, prepositions, and conjunctions of one 
 syllable are unaccented, unless the sense very plainly de- 
 mands a different treatment. These two facts enable us to 
 arrange any number of our words so that the accents shall 
 fall on syllables separated by like intervals. The tendency 
 to compare things, and to put like with like, which is in 
 constant operation where there are artistic possibilities, 
 leads men to take satisfaction in this kind of an arrange- 
 ment; and when they have made it, they have produced 
 rhythm. 
 
 A larger rhythm makes prominent as in prose, every 
 second or third accent; but metrical rhythm, i. e., metrey 
 regards every accent. When reading verse, the accents 
 seem to mark it off ; if marching, our feet would keep time 
 to them. Hence, as many syllables as can be grouped 
 about one syllable clearly accented, are termed a measure 
 or foot, — words synonymous as applied to English verse ; 
 though the classic measure sometimes contained two feet. 
 — Poetry as a Representative Art, ii. 
 
 ^ESTHETICS, AS DEVELOPED IN PROFESSOR RAYMOND'S BOOKS. 
 
 {Recapitulation.) In the volumes following "Art in 
 Theory," the order of thought adopted in that book is 
 reversed. Having begun the discussion of the general 
 subject by observing forms as they have been produced by 
 art, and drawing inferences from them, ending with the 
 final inference that all are necessarily expressive of a certain 
 
a "^ ^ AN Akt-?HILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 sign^.ficanc-g, it ^ieerrre<l natural that the endeavor in sub- 
 sequent volumes to determine how art should fulfil the 
 requirements indicated in the introductory volume should 
 start with significance, and work outward, showing what 
 different conceptions it is possible to express in art, and how 
 these determine its form. In pursuing this line of thought, 
 the first thing to do, of course, was to examine the connec- 
 tion between significance and form in general. This sub- 
 ject was assigned to the volume of the series entitled **The 
 Representative Significance of Form." The next thing to 
 do was to examine the connection between significance and 
 the possible forms of each of the different arts in particular. 
 This was done in the volume entitled "Poetry as a Repre- 
 sentative Art"; also in that part of the volume entitled 
 **Rh5rthm and Harmony in Poetry and Music" which is 
 devoted to the discussion of ** Music as a Representative 
 Art," as well as in the volume entitled "Painting, Sculp- 
 ture, and Architecture as Representative Arts." Having 
 examined the methods of representing significance through 
 form in general, and in each class of forms in each different 
 art in particular, the next thing to do was to examine form 
 in itself — that is, as something which, though influenced by 
 significance, and in practice always connected with signifi- 
 cance, may, nevertheless, for the purposes of analytic study, 
 be considered as existing apart from anything else, and as 
 developing according to laws having to do mainly, if not 
 solely, with that which pertains to the appeal to the senses. 
 Here, in analogy to the course pursued when studying sig- 
 nificance, attention was directed first to the sources, 
 methods, and effects of form in general. This was done in 
 the volume entitled "The Genesis of Art-Form." Next, 
 what had been learned with reference to form in general was 
 applied to form as manifested in each of the arts. This was 
 done in the two concluding volumes of the series, " Rhythm 
 and Harmony in Poetry and Music," and "Proportion and 
 Harmony of Line and Color in Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture." — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color ^ 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 ESTHETICS, AS INFLUENCING MANNERS. 
 
 What is the reason that a man of aesthetic culture is the 
 last to come into his home swearing like a cowboy, cocking 
 his hat over the vases on the mantelpiece, or forcing his 
 boots up into their society ? Because this sort of manner is 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 3 
 
 not to his taste. Why not? Because, for one reason, he 
 has learned the value of little matters of appearance; and 
 for any man to learn of them in one department is to learn 
 of them in all departments. — Essay on Art and Education, 
 
 .ESTHETICS, AS INFLUENCING SCIENCE AND RELIGION {seC dlso 
 
 mention of the first under art, religion, awe? science). 
 
 Esthetic studies, among which one may include anything 
 that has to do with elocution, poetry, music, drawing, paint- 
 ing, modeling, building, or furnishing, whether we consider 
 their influence upon the artist or upon the patron of art, 
 are needed, in order to connect and complete the results of 
 education as developed through science alone or through 
 religion alone. These studies can do for our minds what 
 science cannot, crowning its work with the halo of imagina- 
 tion and lighting its path to discovery. They can do for 
 us what religion cannot, grounding its conceptions upon 
 accuracy of observation and keeping them true to facts. 
 Art unites the separated intellectual influences of the two 
 other spheres. It can not only hold the mirror up to nature, 
 but it can make all nature a mirror, and hold it up to the 
 heavens. In times of intellectual and spiritual storm and 
 stress, when night is above and waves below and winds 
 behind and breakers ahead, the voice of art can sometimes 
 speak peace to conflicting elements, and bring a great calm; 
 and then, in the blue at our feet, we can see not only a little 
 of the beauty of a little of the surface of the little star in 
 which we live, but something also of the grandeur of all the 
 stars of all the universe. — Idem. 
 
 .ESTHETICS, MEANING OF. 
 
 The word (Esthetics is traceable to a work termed **iEs- 
 thetica, "publishedin Germany in 1750, by A. G. Baumgarten. 
 The word was derived from the Greek a?a0Y)Ttx6<; meaning 
 *' fitted to be perceived," and is now used to designate that 
 which is fitted to the requirements of what philosophers 
 term perception; in other words, fitted to accord with the 
 laws, whether of physiology or psychology, which make 
 effects appealing to the mind through the organs of per- 
 ception — i. e., through the senses — satisfactory, agreeable, 
 and, as we say, beautiful. If such effects need to be ** fitted '* 
 to be perceived, they, of course, need to be made to differ 
 from the condition in which they are presented in nature. 
 That which causes them to differ from this is art. Esthetics 
 
4 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 is the science of the beautiful as exempHfied in art. The 
 latter has to do with the processes through which a sight or 
 a sound may be "fitted to be perceived"; the former, with 
 the effects after it has been put through these processes. 
 One cannot be artistic without being able to design and 
 produce ; he may be cBsthetic, when able merely to appreciate 
 and enjoy the results of design and production. The 
 German term for the science, which some have tried to 
 introduce into English, is (Esthetic. But this term, except 
 when employed as an adjective, seems to be out of analogy 
 with English usage. According to it, the singular end- 
 ing ic, as in logic and music, commonly designates some single 
 department in which the methods of the science produce 
 similar results. The plural ending ics, as in mathematics, 
 physics, mechanics, and ethics, commonly designates a group 
 of various departments, in which similar methods produce 
 greatly varying results. The many different departments 
 both of sight and of sound in which can be applied the 
 principles underlying effects that can be "fitted to be per- 
 ceived, " seem to render it appropriate and important that in 
 English the science treating of them should be termed 
 (Esthetics. — Essentials of Esthetics, Preliminary Note. 
 
 ESTHETICS vs. UTILITY {sCC also ART EXPRESSING THOUGHT). 
 
 Of course, in certain respects, these (aesthetic) arts may 
 be as useful as any that are termed useful: but the utility 
 in them is always such as produces not a material but a 
 mental result, and even no mental result except indirectly 
 through an effect upon the senses. — Art in Theory, ii. 
 
 ALTERNATION AS RELATED TO PROPORTION. 
 
 The pillars alternate with the spaces between the pillars. 
 In such cases, if all the pillars, as compared with one another 
 and not with the spaces between them, are of like apparent 
 dimensions, and also all the spaces, as compared with one 
 another and not with the pillars, then it is not necessary 
 that the ratio between the dimensions of the pillars and 
 the dimension of the spaces should be easily recognized. . . . 
 Whatever may be the ratio, the mind will take in at a glance 
 the fact that one pillar is to the space next to it as a second 
 pillar is to a second space. In Cologne Cathedral towers, it 
 is important that the storeys, as they have been termed, 
 should seem — though gradually diminished in order to 
 Increase the apparent height — of like height, and that the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 5 
 
 same should seem to be the case with the cornices or mould- 
 ings separating these storeys; but it is less important that 
 the exact ratio between the height of the storeys and the 
 height of the mouldings should be recognized. In all these 
 cases, too, it is important, that, while the alternating 
 measurements seem alike, the intervening ones should seem 
 sufficiently unlike the others not to confuse the mind by 
 suggesting likeness where it is not intended to be suggested. 
 — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color , x. 
 
 ANALOGY, ARGUMENT FROM. 
 
 An argument from analogy is always derived from a few 
 forms that are representative, on the one hand, of a whole 
 series of forms, and are representative, on the other hand, 
 of a certain mental significance that is expressible through 
 forms alone, and is actually expressed through the particular 
 forms thus used. — The Representative Significance of Fornix 
 
 XII. 
 
 ANALOGY IN ART {see olso ART, THE CONNECTING LINK). 
 
 How now is it with art? Its conceptions have been said 
 to partake of the nature partly of those of religion and 
 partly of those of science. They must, therefore, be partly 
 indefinite and partly definite; and their expression, there- 
 fore, must partake of the nature partly of suggestion and 
 partly of formulation. An indefinite suggestion is imparted 
 through definite formulation according to the method not 
 of logic, but of analogy; and a formulation of that which 
 cannot be definitely communicated, but only indefinitely 
 suggested, cannot be said to be presented, but only rep- 
 resented. These are the reasons for maintaining, as will be 
 done in this chapter, that an artistic conception tends to 
 expression through analogical representation. — Idem, xi. 
 
 The fact that the conceptions of art, as distinguished 
 from those of religion and of science, cannot communicate 
 significance except through the use of analogically represen- 
 tative forms, involves a limitation, which, like all limita- 
 tions, is, in one sense, a source of weakness. But, in another 
 sense, it is a source of strength, and a source of this in the 
 exact degree in which its limitations are clearly recognized 
 and no effort is made to overstep them. What but a 
 consciousness of these limitations has caused all our great 
 artists, when desiring to make their presentations of truth 
 accord with the degree of knowledge or the phase of thought 
 
6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 of their own period or country, to content themselves, in 
 place of discussing and explaining conditions, with merely- 
 describing their appearances? But notice that it is precisely 
 because they have contented themselves with this, that 
 progress in knowledge and thought, which is constantly 
 rendering obsolete the results presented in science and 
 philosophy, and even systems of religion, does not interfere 
 with the enduring influence of works of art. In these works, 
 certain appearances of material or human nature have been 
 selected for reproduction. Through unique combinations 
 of these, the significance behind them has been brought out 
 more uniquely, yet the inferences which are drawn from 
 them, so far as art is strictly and solely representative, can 
 be drawn with as little arbitrary bias as from nature itself. 
 Art of this character can appeal to the intelligence and the 
 sympathy of all audiences of all periods. Its significance can 
 be perceived and felt wherever men have eyes or ears, for 
 its products continue always to be what they were when first 
 conceived — faithful images of the real life by which human- 
 ity is constantly surrounded. — Idem, xii. 
 
 ANALOGY, WHAT IT IS AND HOW USED. 
 
 Imagination is accustomed to jump the steps of logic. 
 Yet often, as we have found, through subconscious intel- 
 lection, it reaches exactly the same conclusions as are 
 reached by investigation. How does imagination do this? 
 Through arguing not logically but analogically. The term 
 analogy is derived from two Greek words, aya, signifying 
 thereon, and Xdyoq, signifying a word. The conception 
 underlying the term, therefore, seems to be that a natural 
 appearance, i. e., a form to which the term is applied, has the 
 effect of a word; — that it is a part of that whole of nature 
 which is frequently called the "unwritten word." More- 
 over, analogy implies, beyond this, that some one natural 
 appearance or form has been compared with at least one 
 other, which is found to furnish a word thereon, or a word in 
 addition, so that the two or more appearances taken together 
 can be considered as words of the same meaning or sig- 
 nificance. It is an argument from an analogy between not 
 two but many — in fact, as many as possible — different 
 appearances, that causes the conception of the unity of 
 nature. — Idem, xii. 
 
 A work of art completes our ideal of that which should 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 7 
 
 characterize an image of nature, in the degree only in which 
 it is a word in addition, in the sense of being something that 
 both suggests nature in appearance and, at the same time, 
 exempHfies the laws that operate in nature. We term the 
 work one of creative imagination mainly because, in both 
 form and significance, in the way in which it appeals to 
 both the physical senses and to the whole mind, it seems 
 to be a continuation of the work of creation. — Ideniy xii. 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON WORDS, WHY POETIC {see WORDS, FOREIGN). 
 
 The principles just unfolded are closely related — in 
 connection, however, with one or two other considerations — 
 to that preference which almost all English poets exhibit for 
 words of native or Anglo-Saxon origin. . . . The words of 
 Anglo-Saxon origin include most of those used in our youth, 
 in connection with which, owing to long familiarity with 
 them, we have the most definite possible associations. 
 Whenever we hear these words, therefore, they seem pre- 
 eminently representative. 
 
 Then, too, we hear in the Anglo-Saxon derivatives, to a 
 greater extent than in the foreign, the sounds which, when 
 originally uttered, were meant to be significant of their 
 sense. In fact, almost all the words instanced in another 
 place as having sounds of this kind were Anglo-Saxon. On 
 the contrary, almost all our words derived from the Latin 
 through the French have suffered a radical change in sound, 
 both in the French language and in our own. Therefore 
 their sounds, if ever significant of their meanings, can 
 scarcely be expected to be so now. 
 
 Again, we know, as a rule, the history of our Anglo- 
 Saxon terms, inasmuch as we still use them in their differ- 
 ent meanings and applications, as developed by association 
 and comparison. But foreign words are usually imported 
 into our language in order to designate some single definite 
 conception, and often one very different from that which 
 they designated originally. All of us, for instance, can see 
 the different meanings of a word like way or fair and the 
 connections between them; but to most of us words like 
 dunce and pagans, from the Latin Duns and pagani, have 
 only the effects of arbitrary symbols. 
 
 One other reason applies to compound words. If the 
 different terms put together in these exist and are in pres- 
 ent use in our own language, as is the case with most of our 
 
8 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 native compounds, then each part of the compound con- 
 veys a distinct idea of its separate meaning; so that we 
 clearly perceive in the word its different factors. For in- 
 stance, the terms uprightness, overlook, underwriter, under- 
 standing, pastime, all summon before the mind both of 
 the ideas which together make up the word. We recognize, 
 at once, whatever comparison or picture it represents. In 
 compound words of entirely foreign origin, on the contrary, 
 it is almost invariably the case that, at least, one of the 
 factors does not exist at present in our own tongue. In- 
 tegrity meant a picture to the Roman. But none of us use 
 the word from which its chief factor is derived. So we fail 
 to see the picture. Nor do we use either factor of the words 
 depravity, defer, retire. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xvii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE (see mention of it under comparison, com- 
 position, PROPORTION, and representation), 
 
 ARCHITECTURE AND MUSIC, WHY BUT SLIGHTLY IMITATIVE. 
 
 The musician constructs an entire symphony from a single 
 significant series of tones, and the architect constructs an 
 entire building from a significant series of outlines. At 
 the same time, there is, in both arts, an occasional return 
 to nature for the purpose of incorporating, if not imitating, 
 in the product some new expression of significance. But 
 the fact that they are both developed from this sustained 
 and subjective method of giving expression to a first sugges- 
 tion, makes such a return to nature much less frequent in 
 them than in the other arts. — Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, xvii. 
 
 One more point of similarity between music and archi- 
 tecture ought, perhaps, to be mentioned. It is this, that 
 while, as among very young children, for instance, the in- 
 articulated tones that develop into music antedate the 
 articulated words that develop into poetry, the artistic 
 forms of music, as in melody and harmony, are developed 
 much later than those of poetry. In the same way, too, 
 while the building of huts that develops into architecture 
 antedates the drawing, coloring, and carving that develop 
 into painting and sculpture, the artistic forms of architec- 
 ture, as in ornamental columns, pediments, and spires, are 
 developed later than painting and sculpture of, at least, 
 sufficient excellence to merit recognition. Of course, the 
 human being is obliged at a very early stage in his history 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 9 
 
 to provide means of shelter. But he is not influenced to 
 construct that which he erects in such a way as to give 
 expression to his thoughts and emotions, which is essential 
 for an artistic motive, as early as he is influenced to draw 
 pictures for the same purpose. A boy, or a boylike savage, 
 using a pencil or knife, will enjoy expressing his thoughts 
 and emotions by way of imitation for its own sake, long 
 before he will enjoy doing the same for the sake of ornament- 
 ing what would be just as useful without ornamentation. 
 In the former case, his mind begins by being at play; in 
 the latter, by being at work ; and his first desire always is 
 to be rid of work. — Idem, xvii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, ARTISTIC, DEVELOPED FROM USEFUL CON- 
 STRUCTION [see also ornament). 
 Using as a theme a few notes representing a mood of mind 
 as indicated by a song of nature, the musician goes on to 
 compose a whole symphony to correspond with them. So, 
 from a few outlines of windows, doors, or roofs, the archi- 
 tect goes on to construct a whole building to correspond with 
 these. This method he applies not only to the development 
 of new forms, but to the ornamentation of old forms. In 
 doing this, he merely carries out a principle exemplified in 
 the action of the human mind in any like relation. For 
 instance, a man, for practical purposes, produces a piece of 
 woven cloth or something made through the use of it. That 
 the cloth may not ravel at its edge, a section of it is pur- 
 posely unraveled there, or a hem is made here, or, if two 
 pieces of cloth be used, a seam is produced where the two 
 are joined. After a little, according to a law which the mind 
 always follows, the imagination begins to experiment with 
 these necessary contrivances, and then the unraveled edge, 
 the hem, the seam, each respectively, becomes a fringe, a 
 border, or a stripe; i. e., each is developed into one of the 
 well-known ornamental resources of the art of the tailor 
 or the upholsterer. It is the same in architecture. When 
 the imagination begins to play with the underpinnings of 
 buildings, or with the means of approaching and entering 
 them, it gives us foundations, steps, or porches ; when with 
 the parts upholding the roof, it gives us pillars, pilasters, or 
 buttresses; and when with the upper or lower parts of 
 openings, it gives us caps, or sills, of doors or windows ; when 
 with the roof and its immediate supports, it gives entabla- 
 
10 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 tures, eves, gables, domes, or spires. All these features, 
 moreover, are representative. If the foundations be appar- 
 ent and large, they indicate support and sufficient support. 
 If the steps or entrances be broad, they indicate accommoda- 
 tions on the inside for a multitude. If the windows be high 
 or wide, they indicate a high or wide room on the inside. 
 In thoroughly successful architecture, the walls are es- 
 pecially transparent, as it were, revealing the internal ar- 
 rangements. Horizontal mouldings or string-courses show 
 where the floors are, and vertical buttresses or pilasters, 
 where are the partitions. Roofs, when artistic, are visible. 
 In public buildings, at least, they should indicate the shapes 
 of the ceilings under them. A dome is out of place unless it 
 span a vast space; and towers and spires are inexcusable 
 unless they be adaptations of features that are useful. — 
 Essentials of Esthetics, vii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, COLD AND WARM COLOR IN (see COLOR.) 
 
 As applied to architecture, it is evident that, aside from 
 the effects of form, which in certain cases may entirely 
 counterbalance those of color, the colder the color, the more 
 massive, as a rule, will appear not only the building itself 
 but also the grounds about it; the effect of the cold color 
 being to make the house and its parts seem at a greater 
 distance from the observer, and, therefore, greater in size 
 than it would be at the supposed distance. Hence, another 
 reason for using cold colors in grand buildings. The same 
 principle applies to the painting and the papering of an 
 interior. The warm colors cause an apartment to seem 
 smaller and more cozy, and the cold colors exactly the 
 opposite. The latter on the walls, therefore, not only for 
 the reason suggested on page 204, but because of these 
 uncozy effects, are objectionable. But for ceilings, es- 
 pecially of public halls and churches, blue at least is rightly 
 popular. Thus used it suggests largeness and elevation, as 
 in the sky which it seems to resemble; and it also furnishes, 
 as a rule, an agreeable contrast to the warmer colors appro- 
 priate for the walls. — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture 
 as Representative Arts, xi. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPED FROM ORDINARY BUILDING. 
 
 The earliest human dwellings are supposed to have been 
 caves, or very rudely constructed huts. According to the 
 views presented in " Art in Theory," so long as men expended 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS li 
 
 no thought or emotion upon these beyond that needed in 
 order to secure an end of utility there was no art of archi- 
 tecture. But it is impossible to conceive that the human 
 mind would not begin very soon, in this department as in 
 all others, to pay some attention to aesthetic ends. . . . 
 The earliest traces of architecture indicate endeavors to 
 make pictures — of course, as the material used was stone, 
 to make sculptured pictures — out of that which was being 
 constructed. Fig. . . . for instance, represents one of the 
 earliest attempts at architecture, that has been discovered 
 in Asia Minor. Looking at it, one would suppose that it was 
 a cave, in front of which a framework of wood had been 
 erected. Not at all. . . . These apparently wooden col- 
 umns and beams have been carved out of the native stone 
 of the cave. Why has this been done? Can any one doubt 
 the reason of it? Can any one fail to perceive in them the 
 influence of a picturesque and statuesque motive? Can 
 even those who prophesied so confidently that the theory 
 of this series of essays was sure to break down when it 
 came to be applied to architecture, be so dull as not to see 
 that this wellnigh earliest architecture of which we know 
 was distinctively representative? Observe, too, that it 
 was representative of both mental conceptions and material 
 appearances. No one looking at the entrance of the one 
 cave, or the interior of the other, could fail to recognize 
 both that a man had been at work upon it, and also that 
 he had been at work for the purpose of reproducing that 
 which he had seen elsewhere. It would represent the man, 
 because one would know that the person who had planned 
 the carving had been accustomed to wooden constructions, 
 and it would represent his thought or feeling with refer- 
 ence to these, because it would show his appreciation and 
 admiration of certain of their effects. Otherwise he would 
 never have tried to reproduce similar effects through the 
 use of material infinitely harder to shape. — Paintings 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, xvil. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE DIFFERENT FROM ORDINARY BUILDING. 
 
 While no one confounds poetry, painting, or sculpture 
 with the early inartistic form of expression from which it 
 is developed, there are many who suppose that everything 
 used for the purpose of shelter, even the rudest hut of the 
 savage, is an exemplification of architecture. But one 
 
12 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 might as well suppose everything of the nature of language 
 to be an exemplification of poetry. It has a relation to 
 poetry. It contains the germs from which the art grows; 
 but this is all. So with the hut of the savage, and with 
 many constructions more pretentious. An ordinary wood- 
 shed has no more to do with architecture than the cry of 
 our nursery, the talk of our kitchen, the sign of our barber, 
 or the rock of our curbstone has to do with the respective 
 art to which it seems allied, whether music, poetry, painting, 
 or sculpture. — Idem, xx. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, EXPRESSION IN. 
 
 Underlying architecture too, there are subjective modes 
 of expression. There are the ideas, for instance, of support 
 and shelter; and these ideas it is by no means impossible 
 or unusual to represent by gesture. Moreover, in all the 
 other arts too there are objective products intervening be- 
 tween the subjective and the artistic forms. Artificial 
 resonant sounds, spoken and written language, hieroglyphic 
 drawings and carvings are conditions that antedate music, 
 poetry, painting, or sculpture, no less than house building 
 antedates architecture. House building, moreover, accord- 
 ing to the principles that have been unfolded, is no less 
 truly a form of natural expression than these others are. 
 It springs from the nature of the primitive man, precisely 
 as nest-building or dam-building from the nature of the 
 bird or the beaver. 
 
 That architecture does not reproduce the forms of nature 
 in as strict a sense as do poetry, painting, and sculpture 
 is true; yet, as we shall find hereafter, its products are 
 modeled upon these forms in as strict a sense as is the case 
 in music. This art, like it, is evolved from the unfolding 
 of the principles underlying nature's methods of formation 
 even more than from a reproduction of its actual forms. 
 And yet architecture does reproduce these latter. The 
 portico of the Greek temple is acknowledged to be nothing 
 more than an elaboration in stone, for the sake merely of 
 elaborating its possibilities of beauty, of the rude wooden 
 building with a roof supported by posts, which was used 
 by the primitive man in his natural state. A Chinese or 
 Japanese temple or palace, with its many separate small 
 structures, each covered by a roof sagging downward from 
 the apex before moving upward again at the eaves, is 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 13 
 
 nothing more than an elaboration in wood, for the sake of 
 elaborating the possibilities of beauty in it, of the rude tent 
 used by the nomadic ancestors of these people in their 
 primitive natural states. That Gothic columns and arches 
 are merely imitative elaborations, for the same reason, of 
 the methods and manners of support suggested by arrange- 
 ments of rows of tree- trunks and their branches, has been 
 strenuously denied and even ridiculed. But the fact re- 
 mains that an avenue of trees with bending branches in- 
 variably suggests the effect of a Gothic cathedral. If so, 
 why could it not have suggested the conception of a Gothic 
 cathedraltothearchitect who first planned one? . . . There 
 is nothing in the art itself necessarily removing it from a 
 sphere identical with that of painting and sculpture. Its 
 products, it is true, must fulfil the purely technical prin- 
 ciples of mechanical contrivance. But so must works of 
 music fulfil the principles of harmony, to say nothing of 
 the technique of execution. So must works of poetry or 
 painting or sculpture fulfil the principles of grammar, 
 rhythm, rhyme, color, or proportion. But in all these 
 arts equally the fulfilment of such laws is only a means to 
 an end. That end is the distinctively human satisfaction 
 derived from elaborating forms in excess of that which is 
 demanded in order to meet the exigencies of material utiHty , 
 elaborating them simply because they are felt to be attrac- 
 tive and beautiful in themselves. — Art in Theory, viii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, EXPRESSIVE OF CHARACTER {see alsO ARCHI- 
 TECTURE REPRESENTATIVE, MORALITY AS INFLUENCED 
 BY ARCHITECTURE, and SKYSCRAPERS). 
 
 Is it too much to say that subtle analysis may occasionally 
 find reason to suspect that it is the lack of the good and 
 the true in American manhood, that causes the lack of the 
 beautiful in the American city street or college campus? 
 Is it this lack in character that destroys the symmetry 
 of adjoining buildings by throwing the cornice of the last 
 comer just enough above that of its fellows to produce 
 the effect — and for a similar reason — of the feather that 
 stands straighter and higher than any surrounding it, in 
 the head-gear of the uncivilized Indian? And then, be- 
 sides the outHnes, think for a moment of the inharmony 
 of the colors! — sometimes of the paint, sometimes of the 
 brick and stone, imported too, at great expense from distant 
 
14 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 places, to afford another opportunity for the snob*s exhibi- 
 tion of himself ! The whole method of procedure is as fatal 
 to the requirements of sound sesthetics as of neighborly 
 courtesy. — The Representative Significance of Form, xxiv. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, FRAUD IN (see also ORNAMENT). 
 
 Is it not about time that mansard roofs and wooden 
 cornices, which are no real roofs or cornices at all, with 
 their various mouldings almost as light as if intentionally 
 curled into shavings, should be committed to the flames, 
 once and forever? This is said not merely because they 
 are frauds, but because they are — what in art is worse — 
 palpable frauds, frauds clearly seen to afford no legitimate 
 conclusion whatever to a wall of stone, — donkey's ears 
 protruding where they are clearly seen to have no connec- 
 tion with the body under them. — Idem, 
 
 A more radical and, for this reason, thorough way of 
 correcting the error would be to avoid all deceit, and, in 
 accordance with the method in art sometimes termed sin- 
 cerity {see page 407) , to arrange the materials in such ways 
 that the apparent support would be the real support. In 
 an age of iron, why should not the iron be shown, and al- 
 lowed to reveal its genuine character? If a roof be really 
 supported by steel girders, why should not the steel be 
 visible? A ceiling of wood, revealing its natural colors 
 and grainings, resting on beams of polished or nickel- 
 plated steel, might be made to have effects, both as regards 
 material and color, in the highest sense chaste and beautiful. 
 The metal might even be ornamented and as legitimately 
 too as if it were bronze. — Painting, Sculpture, and Archi- 
 tecture as Representative Arts, xviii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE INFLUENCED BY A ONE-SIDED THEORY. 
 
 Fifteen years ago everybody in Boston was talking about 
 "sincerity" in art. As applied to building a house, this 
 meant that every respective bath-room, or closet, or stair- 
 case should be indicated on the exterior by a significantly 
 constructed window, or blank space, or protuberance, — a 
 thoroughly sound principle so far as it was applicable. 
 But with the narrowness and the lack, in a distinctive sense, 
 of comprehension characterizing the artistic notions of our 
 country, the principle was applied to everything — to every 
 exterior effect, for instance, without any regard to any 
 requirements of proportion or harmony. There followed 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 15 
 
 those developments of the "Queen Anne" style, which 
 even the unbalanced conceptions of American criticism had 
 sense enough to nickname "Bloody Mary" and "Crazy 
 Jane." Probably, however, even these were an advance 
 upon the method pursued in the construction of the old 
 Douglas Park University of Chicago, a huge Gothic build- 
 ing, the exterior of which is said to have been actually 
 completed before any attempt had been made to decide 
 upon the rooms or halls to be placed in the interior. Why 
 should this not have been the case? In those days, when 
 men wanted a meat market or a prison, they put up indis- 
 criminately what was supposed to resemble either a Gothic 
 cathedral or a Greek temple. There is no necessity of 
 stopping to argue how far all buildings manifesting so 
 partial a regard for the requirements of art rank below one 
 in which the claims of both significance and form have 
 been given due weight, whether it be a private house or a 
 public hall, a villa on the Rhine or a cathedral at Cologne. — 
 Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music; Introduction 
 to Music as a Representative Art. 
 
 The one thing which can enable an architect to produce 
 that which, so long as it survives, may have a right to 
 claim attention as, in its own style, a model, is this, — to 
 bear in mind the double character of all artistic effects. 
 Depending partly upon outward form, which mainly re- 
 quires a practice of the method pursued in classic art, and 
 partly upon the thought or design embodied in the form, 
 which mainly requires a practice of the method pursued 
 in romantic art, these artistic effects appeal partly to the 
 outward senses and partly to the inward mind; and only 
 when they appeal to both are the highest possibilities of 
 any art realized. — Art in Theory^ iii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE INFLUENCED BY FORMS IN NATURE. 
 
 The simple truth seems to be that the changes from the 
 style of building determined by the use of the horizontal 
 line, the circular arch, and the pointed arch, were not 
 caused merely by the necessities of construction, . . . but 
 also by the appearances of similar forms in nature. The 
 exact effect given to the nave of a Gothic cathedral cannot 
 be attributable merely to a development of methods of 
 construction, nor to an imitation of cheaper buildings. It 
 is of the same character as that which has been shown to 
 
j6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 be true of any representation of natural objects when first 
 attempted. We merely associate the nave with the natural 
 appearances which it only suggests. — Paintings Sculpture, 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, xxi. 
 
 One of the most charming features in connection with the 
 castles on the Rhine, for instance, is their apparent cor- 
 respondence — always in the nature and color of the building- 
 material, and sometimes in outline — to the demands of the 
 surrounding scenery. Art seems in them to have simply 
 carried out the suggestions of nature. Indeed, had we time 
 for it, it would be interesting to study the extent to which 
 such suggestions have influenced those who have originated 
 different styles of architecture. On the borders of the Nile, 
 where the eye must see constantly the low and seldom un- 
 dulating lines of the horizon giving way to the clean-cut 
 limits of an almost cloudless sky, where man learns of multi- 
 formity mainly through the squarely shaped limbs of the 
 cactus and the palm, the proudest achievement of Egyptian 
 architecture seems to have been to chisel angular outlines 
 like those of the pyramids, and to embody an ideal of sym- 
 metry in the stiff smile of the sphynx. But just across the 
 sea, amid the same clearness of atmosphere, yet surrounded 
 by a more generous guise of objects on the earth, that heave 
 heavenward through grand hills and bend genially down 
 amid the shadows of mysterious groves, have been reared 
 the no less distinctly outlined but far more varied and 
 symmetrical column and capital of the Grecian temple. 
 Beyond this land again, amid the vapory climate of the 
 north, where on either side the high horizon reaches up in 
 outlines indistinct, that blend with mountains existing 
 often only in the clouds, the child of storm and fog has 
 drawn the hazy lines that sprout and branch out into pin- 
 nacle and spire above the spirit whose ideal of architecture 
 seems complete alone when he is gazing upward toward 
 his lofty Gothic arch and finial. To-day, in our own land, 
 with the experience and the models of the past to guide us, 
 we may take our choice of any of these styles; and we can 
 learn much from the study of them. But while we study 
 them with care let us be sure that we are paying equal heed 
 to the promptings of nature without us and within us. Let 
 us be sure that we are not sometimes producing forms that 
 are foreign to our own surroundings and demands, and are 
 thus untrue to one of the first principles of the art in fulfil- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 17 
 
 ment of which they are supposed to be constructed. — The 
 Representative Significance of Fornix xxiv. 
 
 Not without reason, certain critics insist that in choosing 
 the material for the construction of a building, preference 
 should be given to that which is natural to the district in 
 which the building is to stand. They say, for instance, that 
 in red sandstone districts it should be built of red sandstone ; 
 in a gray granite district, of gray granite; or in forests in- 
 tended to be left in a rustic state, of logs left in a rustic 
 state. The idea is that a building thus constructed will 
 appear to be a part of the surrounding landscape, harmon- 
 izing with it in color, and, upon a nearer inspection, in 
 material also. There is undoubtedly much in this, as 
 applied to a country residence. But, evidently, all the 
 truth that is in it, is there because it involves one more 
 way of making architecture represent nature. — Paint- 
 ingj Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 XXI. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE INFLUENCED BY FORMS OF ART. 
 
 When our race, with no models to direct them, first began 
 to build houses and temples, the external forms of each were 
 determined by the design for which it was constructed, — 
 a design suggested, as reflection will show that it must 
 have been, by the modes of attaining in nature ends like 
 those of support, protection, and shelter. This being the 
 case, the desire to attain these ends was evident to every 
 one who saw the building; in other words, the building's 
 effects were artistic in the sense of being genuinely repre- 
 sentative of the design of the builder. 
 
 In process of time, however, after many such structures 
 had been erected, and some of them had come to be espe- 
 cially admired for their appearance, a class of artists arose 
 more intent to imitate this appearance than the methods 
 in accordance with which the older architects had designed 
 the buildings and caused them to appear as they did. As 
 a consequence, there came to be no apparent connection 
 between the outward form of a building and that for which 
 it was designed; — in other words, architecture ceased to 
 be representative, in the sense in which the word has been 
 used in this chapter. But besides this, after the arts of 
 painting and sculpture had been developed, architects began 
 to manifest a tendency to imitate the methods, if not the 
 
1« AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 appearances, employed in these oxis.— The Representative 
 Significance of Form, xxvii. 
 
 Fergusson ascribes inferiority to modern architecture as 
 contrasted with mediaeval, — though he does not employ 
 these words, — because of the prevailing tendency in this 
 art to derive its methods from painting and sculpture rather 
 than from the natural promptings and requirements of 
 architecture itself. This tendency often causes the builder 
 to be entirely satisfied with an "elevation" that merely 
 makes a satisfactory picture when drawn on paper. But, 
 as will be shown in the volume of this series entitled " Pro- 
 portion and Harmony of Line and Color," the requirements 
 of perspective often prevent the parts of a building, which, 
 when so drawn, seem to fulfil the principles of proportion 
 from fulfilling them when put into the building itself. 
 Besides this, the tendency leads to other forms of confusion 
 between the kinds of conceptions appropriate for producing 
 effects in this art and of conceptions that find legitimate 
 expression in the other arts only. One element of success- 
 ful architecture undoubtedly is the mere external appear- 
 ance of a building. And yet, if this alone be regarded, is it 
 not evident that the building, according as it is constructed 
 with exclusive reference to its position or proportions, will 
 be the embodiment of a motive less legitimate distinctively 
 to architecture than to landscape-gardening, painting, or 
 sculpture? And is it not because of this confusion of 
 motives that we find in our modern buildings — in their cor- 
 nices, roofs, windows, and walls — so much that is false, 
 in other words, so much that is merely on the outside, put 
 there to look well, not to fulfil or to give embodiment to 
 any such significance as it is the peculiar function of archi- 
 tecture to represent? This is not to say that, in this art, 
 the external form should violate the laws of proportion or 
 harmony; but it is to say that these latter should be made 
 subordinate to the general design, that they should cause 
 the outlines to be so disposed as to indicate this design, 
 and not, as is true in too many cases, to conceal it. — Idem, 
 xxvii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, MODERN, CAN BE ORIGINAL {see dlsO ORIGI- 
 NALITY IN architecture). 
 It is often urged that, in our age and country, no new 
 style of architecture can be originated. With reference 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 19 
 
 to this, something has been said already on page 95 of " Art 
 in Theory," on pages 206 and 293 of " The Genesis of Art- 
 Form," on pages 330 and 406 of " Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts," and on page 227 of 
 the present volume. It may be said here that probably we 
 can find no other ways of bridging openings made for doors 
 and windows than those which have been in vogue for cen- 
 turies, and which have already determined the chief char- 
 acteristics of the Greek, Romanesque, and Gothic styles, 
 namely, the horizontal lintel, the round arch, and the pointed 
 arch, and that probably also the necessity of securing 
 correspondence in architecture must continue to cause all 
 other outlines in our buildings to resemble these. Yet 
 while this is true, it must also be true that in every period 
 in which there is progress, progress is possible in art. 
 
 Our own age has made an advance upon all preceding 
 ones in two regards which should have, and already have 
 had, some influence upon our architecture. These are the 
 development of our mineral resources and of the faciUties 
 of transportation. The one has converted iron, together 
 with various combinations and modifications of it, into a 
 building material, and the other has lined our streets with 
 structures of stone and brick exhibiting every variety of 
 color. One can scarcely beheve otherwise than that if one 
 half of the thought expended on the Parthenon were ex- 
 pended upon incorporating the suggestions and possibilities 
 derived from these two facts, we might originate an archi- 
 tectural style of our own which would become as classic and 
 deserve to be as much admired as that of the Greeks. Iron 
 used for the walls of buildings is inartistic. It looks like 
 an imitation of stone produced by wood and paint, while 
 it is standing; and it cracks, curls, melts, and ceases to 
 stand as soon as a fire of any magnitude begins to heat it. 
 But, used for roofs, it is more in place ; and, where so used, 
 the most economical and convenient shape that can be 
 chosen for it is often the most beautiful. A correspondence 
 between its arching forms and like forms in the stone- or 
 brick- work underneath it, might give rise to a style equally 
 novel and attractive. 
 
 See what is said on page 330 of " Painting, Sculpture, 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts," with reference to 
 methods of letting iron be seen in ceilings. Besides this, 
 iron can span immense spaces, and this fact renders the 
 
20 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 columns characterizing the Gothic, and to some extent, the 
 Greek structures as much out of the way architecturally 
 in some of our modern buildings, as, with our modern uses, 
 they are in the way optically. Large interiors, however, 
 containing few or no columns, necessitate very artistic 
 treatment of the wall-spaces. Otherwise, everything 
 seems too airy and cold. Arrangements of mouldings and 
 spaces can do something toward preventing such effects, 
 but careful attention to the requirements of decorative 
 art can do more. Nor in such cases should efforts be con- 
 fined merely to painting. Decorative color, to be perma- 
 nent, should be resident in the material used; and here, in 
 treating both exterior and interior walls, architects might 
 avail themselves of our modern facilities for transportation. 
 Pictures have been made of mosaics, but few great build- 
 ings have been constructed on the principle of using differ- 
 ently colored bricks and stones and harmonizing them 
 according to the principles of decorative painting. 
 
 Probably an architect who should undertake to erect 
 such a building would be considered audacious; and, unless 
 the materials and colors were judiciously chosen — not 
 too brilliant or diversified — and were arranged in strict 
 fulfilment of the principle that like classes of forms should 
 be characterized by like classes of substances and hues, and 
 were grouped in masses large enough to give dignity to the 
 effect — probably the result would prove this opinion to be 
 correct. Yet a great genius might produce something 
 with a beauty as unique and successful as was the earliest 
 Gothic church in its day, and surpassing the beauty of 
 most of our buildings as much as the frescoed interiors of 
 the present New York merchants* houses surpass the white- 
 washed walls of their Knickerbocker ancestors. Color is 
 certainly an element of beauty. Why should it not be 
 recognized as such in architecture? Even the Greeks 
 acknowledged the fact. It is known now that the marble 
 of the Parthenon, unsurpassed as it is in its capabilities 
 for receiving polish, was painted. But the painting has 
 perished. IJsed on exteriors, it always does perish. Can 
 no imperishable colors be used thus? They can. In a coun- 
 try where brick and stone of all possible compositions and 
 colors can be collected from all quarters at comparatively 
 slight expense, one can imagine churches, halls, streets, 
 entire cities, wholly different in hue and general appearance 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 21 
 
 from any that have ever existed, built of material destined 
 to remain unchanged as long as the pyramids, and, for a 
 longer time, to continue to be models. — Proportion and 
 Harmony oj Line and Color, xxv. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, REPRESENTATIVE {see mention cf architec- 
 ture under representation and representative). 
 In the age in which the Greek temples were constructed, 
 other artists believed — and why not the architect? — that 
 a man should study upon a product, if he intended to have 
 it remain a model for all the future. Is it not natural to 
 suppose that in such an age the structural arrangements 
 intended to counteract optical defects, or to produce optical 
 illusions, or, as some think, to produce, in connection with 
 these, effects of variety or of vagueness in Hne or outHne, 
 were largely the results of the individual experiments of 
 individual builders? If not such results, why were they 
 invariably different in different buildings? But if they 
 were such, the predominating motive in the mind of the 
 artist was not to imitate any particular form that he had 
 seen before, so much as to represent its general effect. 
 Thus, from the beginning of architecture in which we see 
 the builder taking suggestions from primitive huts or from 
 the trunks and branches of trees in nature, to the highest 
 stage of its development, where we see him taking sugges- 
 tions from the works of previous architects, we find him, 
 in the degree in which he is a great artist, representing 
 rather than imitating. — Essentials of ^Esthetics, vi. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, REPRESENTATIVE OF THOUGHT. 
 
 A building, in just as true a sense as a poem, a symphony, 
 a picture, or a statue, is the embodied expression of an 
 idea. In architecture, this idea is a plan. It is sown, so 
 to speak, in a particular locality; and there straightway 
 it springs into walls, branches into wings, leaves into doors 
 and windows, flowers into capstones and roofs, and some- 
 times filaments into spires. — The Representative Significance 
 of Form, xxiv. 
 
 If the internal arrangements are to determine the external 
 ones, as must evidently be the case in all logical construc- 
 tion, then, in the degree in which this principle is carried 
 out artistically, i, e., in such a way as to be made apparent 
 in the form, that which is on the inside must be represented 
 on the outside. In other words, a building to be made 
 
22 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 expressive of the thought, which, in this case, would mean 
 the design of the artist, must have an external appearance 
 which manifests the internal plan. — Painting, SculpturCj 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, xviii. 
 
 Walls in which there are doors, windows, and projections 
 such as pilasters, pillars, buttresses, or string-courses, — 
 and the same is true of foundations, porches, and roofs, — 
 awaken as much more interest than do blank walls, as 
 bodies do when infused with a soul having the power to 
 express thought and feeling than they do when they are 
 merely corpses. Of course, too, the more clearly the archi- 
 tectural features reveal not only that there is thought 
 and purpose behind them, but what this thought and pur- 
 pose is, the more successful is the result. — Idem, xviii. 
 
 A traveler, judging merely from appearances, may say 
 with reference to the methods of construction, that some 
 particular pillar, bracket, Hntel, arch, was shaped and placed 
 as it is in order to furnish just the support needed for some 
 particular weight or arrangement of material which is over 
 it. Or he may say that some particular foundation was 
 laid as it is in order to suit some particularly rocky, sandy, 
 or marshy soil ; or that some particular roof was pitched as 
 it is in order to fit a dry or a wet climate, to shed rain or 
 snow. Or, judging from arrangements of doors or windows, 
 he may say, with reference to the general uses of a building, 
 that some particular part is an audience hall, a chapel, or a 
 picture gallery. Even if he find nothing except founda- 
 tions, he can often declare this to be a theatre, and that to 
 be a temple, or a bath, or a private house; and not only so, 
 but sometimes, as at Pompeii, he can tell the uses of each 
 of the different rooms of the house. 
 
 Observe that, in all these ways, it is possible for a build- 
 ing to be representative; moreover, that just in the degree 
 in which it is so, the interest awakened by it is enhanced. 
 It then comes to have the same effect upon us that would 
 be produced did its builder stand by us and tell us exactly 
 what his thoughts were when designing the arrangement 
 that we see. It is as if he were to say: ** I had a conception 
 that it would be a good idea in this position to have an 
 arch projected so, or a ceiling supported by a bracket in- 
 serted so; or a foundation in soil like this laid so; or a roof 
 in a climate like this shaped so; or a chapel for a sect like 
 this planned so; or an audience hall for an assembly like 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 23 
 
 this arranged so. " And the more one knows of architecture, 
 the more innumerable will he recognize to be the thoughts, 
 and, in the degree in which ornamentation is increased, 
 the aesthetic feelings that it is possible for the architect to 
 represent through these apparently lifeless forms of wood 
 or brick or stone. — Idem, xvii. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, ROMAN VS. GREEK {see under comparison). 
 
 One or two other statements of Vitruvius may be of 
 interest. But while reading them it is important to bear 
 in mind that their significance lies not in the figures given 
 but in the general principle which they exemplify. The 
 figures are Roman, the principle is Greek. Greek architec- 
 ture was original, and apparently, for reasons already 
 indicated, what might be termed independent and indi- 
 vidual. Roman architecture was imitative, and, as these 
 quotations from Vitruvius show, traditional and mechanical. 
 The principles that the Greeks sought to carry out in a 
 spirit of freedom, the Romans sought to carry out in servil- 
 ity to the letter; and it is as true in art as in religion that 
 "the letter killeth." — Proportion and Harmony of Line and 
 Color, XV. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE VS. PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. 
 
 The painter and the sculptor observe nature for the pur- 
 pose of reproducing its forms; the architect, for the pur- 
 pose of producing a new and different form, for which, as a 
 whole, nature furnishes no copy. In his work the contrast 
 between the product and nature is often so complete that 
 the one no longer, as in the case of painting, necessarily 
 suggests the other. Although the shapes of the founda- 
 tions, pillars, capitals, arches, roofs, chimneys, or towers 
 of a building may suggest reminiscences of nature, they 
 are constructed almost invariably as if the architect had 
 forgotten what was the particular appearance of anything 
 that had inspired his forms. He is influenced somewhat 
 by nature, but much more by his own mind, which works 
 with the least possible artistic regard for nature's disposi- 
 tions of the forms that he uses. If these forms be beauti- 
 ful, it is less because they are the same in detail as those 
 found in nature, than because they are the same in principle, 
 because they are controlled by the same general laws that 
 underlie all appearances and combinations of them that 
 are naturally pleasing. — Art in Theory, xix. 
 
24 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, WHY STYLES SHOULD NOT BE MIXED. 
 
 The world may improve in art as in other things. Yet, 
 as every thinker knows, all improvements are in the nature 
 of developments that are made in strict accordance with 
 fixed laws. We have found that scientific classification, 
 as well as artistic construction, demands that like be put 
 with like. This demand is beyond the reach of any human 
 power that may seek to change it. It exists in the consti- 
 tution of the mind. No architect can disregard it, and 
 produce a building satisfactory to men in general. No 
 building has ever obtained and preserved a reputation as a 
 work of art, in which this requirement has been neglected. 
 . . . The true reason, therefore, for not introducing the 
 forms of Greek, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture into 
 the same building, is that, as a rule, such a course is fatal 
 to unity of effect. These principal styles and some of the 
 subordinate styles developed from them differ so essentially 
 that to blend them is to cause confusion in the form where 
 the mind demands intelligibiHty, which, so far as our present 
 line of thought is applicable, means something in which 
 many repetitions of similar appearances reveal that all are 
 parts of the same whole. Buildings in which there are 
 very few, if any, forms alike, are not, whatever else they 
 may be, works of art. — The Genesis of Art- Form, xii. 
 
 So far as the appearance of forms alone is concerned, there 
 is no reason why certain features of the Greek style should 
 not accompany certain of the Gothic. To use them to- 
 gether would not violate in the least the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of art, that like forms should be put together. At 
 the same time, to do so would cause art to associate features 
 that have come to be clearly dissociated in the mind. For 
 this reason, it is possible that, as long as the world lasts, 
 no artist can mix them extensively without suggesting to 
 some an amount of incongruity wholly inconsistent with 
 those effects of unity invariably present in arts of the highest 
 character. — Idem, ix. 
 
 Under all the arts are certain principles that successful 
 products need to exemplify. As applied to building, for 
 instance, it is not because the Gothic artist did not mix 
 horizontal with arched coverings for windows that it should 
 not be done to-day. Our artists should be actuated by a 
 higher motive than imitation. What they should avoid 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 25 
 
 is a violation of the principle exemplified by the Gothic 
 builders, which principle is to put, wherever it is possible, 
 like with like. It was pointed out in Chapter XVII of 
 **The Genesis of Art-Form" that in strict accordance 
 with this principle, as it is applied in all the other arts, 
 there might be a legitimate style in which, from the lower 
 storey up, the acuteness of the arches in each storey would 
 be gradually increased; also, that in these days of easy 
 and extensive methods of transportation, there might be 
 a legitimate style, in which, through the use of stones or 
 of other materials of different hues, the effects of con- 
 trast in coloring could be produced, even on exteriors. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The use of color enters largely into effects in painting, 
 and much imitation of natural forms characterizes both 
 painting and sculpture. Neither fact is true of architec- 
 ture. Its effects are often confined to those of forms alone. 
 This makes these of supreme importance. Its forms, 
 moreover, are originated by the artist. This makes it 
 easy to have them such as interfere with what may be called 
 the natural requirements of art. For both reasons, the 
 architect needs to be exceedingly careful in his work. A 
 painter has but to copy a tree as he sees it in nature, and 
 every part of it will be consonant. The leaves or branches 
 will differ in size and shape and, in the autumn, at least, 
 differ sufficiently in color to suggest differences in combina- 
 tion and material. But, comparing leaf with leaf and 
 branch with branch, the same principle of formation will 
 so manifest itself in every part of the tree that no one who 
 sees it can doubt that each belongs to the same organism. A 
 building should appear to be as much a unity in this sense 
 as a tree. Exact repetition of the same forms, as already 
 explained, would always make it seem thus. But, in archi- 
 tecture, exact repetition is not always possible ; nor even, if 
 we wish to produce thoroughly natural effects, desirable. 
 The method that is both possible and desirable is consonance. 
 A moment's reflection will reveal, too, that there are certain 
 very simple devices of arrangement which necessarily secure 
 this effect. It ought to reveal, also, that the effect is im- 
 portant enough to make even a child notice the defects in 
 cases in which it is neglected. — The Genesis of Art-Form^ 
 
 XV. 
 
26 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 ART. 
 Nature made human, or nature re-made by the human 
 mind, is, of course, a very broad definition of art — one that 
 scarcely begins to suggest all that is needed for a full under- 
 standing of the subject. But it is one that all can accept, 
 and therefore it will serve as a starting-point for what is 
 to follow. — Art in Theory, i. 
 
 ART, ESTHETIC {see also ESTHETICS, MEANING OF). 
 
 ^Esthetic Art is the use of natural forms that seem beau- 
 tiful for the expression of human thoughts and emotions ; or, 
 as we may say, it is natural beauty adapted to the formu- 
 lation of human sentiment. — Notes Taken in a Lecture. 
 
 -Esthetic art, when possessed of the finest and highest 
 quaUties, from its first conception in the mind to its last 
 constructive touch in the product, is a result of a man's 
 imagination giving audible or visible embodiment to his 
 thoughts or emotions by representing them in a form trace- 
 able to material or human nature, which form attracts him 
 on account of its beauty, and is selected and elaborated 
 by him into an artistic product in accordance with the 
 imaginative exercise of comparison or of association, modi- 
 fied, when necessary, so as to meet the requirements of 
 factors which can be compared or associated in only a partial 
 degree. — The Essentials of ^Esthetics, xviii. 
 
 ART AND BEAUTY {see also NATURE, TRUTH TO). 
 
 Of course the word art may be broadly ascribed to any- 
 thing that is made, especially by way of imitation; and, 
 therefore, the term artistic may properly designate any 
 product of this kind. But the word has also a more limited 
 meaning, — the meaning that we all recognize when found 
 in the terms the fine arts, or les beaux arts. When this is 
 its meaning, the objects that art imitates must be, pre- 
 dominatly at least, beautiful, and the product itself must 
 introduce ugliness, or its concomitant, impurity, only 
 subordinately ; — by way, so to speak, of contrast, by way 
 of shading that offsets brightness. A good deal that is 
 true to life is not true to the beautiful in Hfe; and, therefore, 
 contrary to the opinion of these writers, is philosophically 
 out of place in the highest art. Of course, this principle, 
 if applied, would rule out of the highest rank a number of 
 our modern plays — some of those by Ibsen, Sudermann, 
 Hauptmann, and d'Annunzio. If so, they ought to be 
 ruled out. The principle is one that no one who thinks 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 27 
 
 correctly can fail to accept ; and, as proved by the survival 
 of interest in Greek art, it is the only principle that all 
 people, at all times, can be expected to accept. — Essay on 
 Art and Morals^ 
 
 In the preceding chapter an endeavor was made to show 
 that art of the highest or finest quality involves three 
 things: first, a reproduction of the phenomena of nature, 
 especially of its sights and sounds ; second, an expression of 
 the thoughts and emotions of the artist; and, third, an 
 embodiment of both these other features in an external 
 product Uke a symphony, a poem, a painting, a statue, a 
 building. The question now arises whether we should not 
 make further Hmitations with reference to the sights or 
 sounds of nature with which the highest art has to deal. 
 . . . The question . . . suggests that when a man not for 
 a useful but, . . . for an aesthetic end, reproduces these, 
 he must do so mainly because something about them has 
 instructed, attracted, and, as we say, charmed him. There 
 is one word which we are accustomed to apply to any form, 
 whether of sight or of sound that attracts and charms us. 
 It is the word beautiful. ... It seems to be conceded that 
 arts of the highest class should reproduce mainly, at least, 
 and some seem to think solely, such phenomena of nature 
 as are beautiful. — Essentials of Esthetics, 11. 
 
 It is only when an effect, whether appealing to the ear 
 or eye, exerts a subtle charm upon the mind and spirit that 
 it influences a man sufficiently to cause him to desire to 
 reproduce it. But what is it that exerts this subtle charm 
 upon the mind and spirit ? It must be something, of course, 
 connected with the appearance or form; for it is this, pre- 
 sumably, which is imitated. But charm exerted by appear- 
 ance or form is due, as a rule, to that which men ordinarily 
 associate with the term Z>eaw/3'. . . . "The beautiful arts," 
 "the fine arts," 'Hhe arts," as we term them, are those in 
 which a man gives expression to the excess within him of 
 mental and spiritual, or, as we may say, intellectual and 
 emotional vitality through a representation of effects 
 exerting that subtle charm which, as a rule, is traceable 
 only to appearances having what is called beauty. — Art in 
 Theory y viii. 
 
 Facts do not confirm any theory to the effect that all 
 the features chosen for art should be beautiful. The most 
 that can be said is that in the main they should be so; 
 
28 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 and that those which are not so should be introduced only 
 in order, by way of contrast, to enhance the beauty of 
 others with which they are combined. — Idem, x. 
 
 Art, as a product of the imagination, always involves 
 more or less use of imagery, as in the imitations of painting 
 and sculpture, and the figures of speech in poetry, to say 
 nothing of more subtle representings in music and architec- 
 ture. This fact renders it possible often for the artist to 
 introduce beauty into his treatment of subjects which, in 
 themselves, are not beautiful. We see this illustrated often 
 in the colors or carvings of pictures, statues, or buildings, 
 and in the similes and metaphors of poems. Notice the 
 following reference to hostile footsteps heard through the 
 darkness of a midnight tempest in a jungle : 
 
 There seems human rhythm in this hell. 
 What hot pursuit is it comes burning through 
 These crackling branches? — The Aztec God. 
 
 And this description of the approach of a threatening 
 storm : 
 
 It came like a boy who whistles first 
 To warn of his form that shall on us burst, 
 As if nature feared to jar the heart 
 By joys too suddenly made to start. 
 
 -The Last Home Gathering. 
 
 — Notes Taken in a Lecture, 
 
 Everybody admits that art is an embodiment of the 
 ideal. Whoever heard of an ideal that was not characterized 
 by beauty? Everybody admits, too, that art is of benefit 
 to individuals or communities in the degree in which it 
 cultivates in them ideaHty. How could it cultivate this, 
 where it presented no ideal because no beauty? Of what 
 use to humanity could art be, where all that could cause 
 it to be of any use whatever was left out of it? — Idem, 
 
 ART AS MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL. 
 
 Art is a form produced by a man, and a man is not yet 
 a spirit. He may have spiritual instincts tending, in a 
 vague way, toward a recognition and production of the 
 beautiful; but, as a man, with a human mind working in a 
 consciously rational way, he knows nothing about form 
 except as he may perceive it in the external world, of the 
 appearances of which alone he is conscious. Nor can he 
 produce form, except so far as he recombines those factors 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 29 
 
 of it which have already been created for him in this exter- 
 nal world. One hears a man talk to himself, and he imi- 
 tates the general form of the talk in a lyric. He hears 
 men talk together, and he imitates the general effect in a 
 drama. He hears them hum, and he imitates the general 
 effect in a melody. He looks at scenery and a human 
 figure, and he imitates the general effect in a painting or a 
 statue. He notices the methods in nature of protection, 
 support, and shelter, and he imitates the general effect in 
 a building. So far as a man is an artist, i. 6., a being who 
 works by intellection as well as by inspiration, it is always 
 nature that furnishes his model. Especially is this true 
 of that which, in art, is beautiful. There is no beauty 
 without form. There is no form except in visible or audible 
 nature. There is no beauty of form that is not suggested 
 in connection with an observation of nature. This applies 
 not only to the general outlines of art-form, but to the de- 
 tails of its elaboration — to rhythm, proportion, tone, color, 
 and the harmony of tone and color. All these, in their 
 perfected phases, are developments of certain great laws 
 of appearance which have to do with the pleasurable or 
 disagreeable effects produced upon the nervous organiza- 
 tion of the eye or ear, or, through suggestion, of the mind 
 itself. There are many physical and psychical elements 
 which, in certain circumstances, enter into the requirements 
 of beauty; but of all these a man knows with certainty only 
 so far as he may study their effects in material nature. 
 What then? — Is beauty merely an attribute of matter? — 
 a superficial quality? Is Plato wholly wrong? Has the 
 idea, the spiritual force which he supposes to be the cause 
 of the expression, no influence? Just the contrary may be 
 true. But so far as the idea appeals to the mind, it can 
 become an object of conscious thought only when embodied 
 in material nature . . . and any one who has faith in the 
 Creative Spirit has faith to believe that the arrangements 
 of nature are such that a thoughtful mind will not fail to 
 find illustrated in them exactly those principles and laws 
 which are suited for one's highest mental and spiritual 
 requirements. Art in reproducing the appearances and 
 methods of nature continues and develops their mental 
 and spiritual effects. In the lyric, the play, the novel, the 
 picture, the statue, — and always in the degree in which 
 the imitation of nature is exact, — art widens the experience 
 
30 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 of men with the same influence upon the mind that would 
 be produced by actual experience, making them wiser, more 
 sympathetic, more charitable; in short, more humane. . . . 
 Art is the expression of human thought and feeling in 
 the terms of nature. This expression is never merely com- 
 municative, nor merely imitative. It is always both. It 
 is representative. Art embodies truth, not dogmatically 
 but imaginatively, and its influence is exerted not by way 
 of dictation, but of suggestion. Therefore, art does not, 
 cannot, and should not take the place — as Plato seems to 
 suppose that it may — of either philosophy, ethics, or the- 
 ology. All these together cannot produce upon conception 
 or emotion the cultural effects of aesthetics. It is well, 
 therefore, to let the latter do its own work, as also to ac- 
 knowledge the value of this work when it is done well. — An 
 in Theory, Appendix ii. 
 
 ART, BREADTH OF ITS RESOURCES. 
 
 Indeed, the resources that may be utilized in art are prac- 
 tically infinite. No man can observe so much as to see 
 any facts outside the limits of its sphere. No man can 
 reflect so much as to arrive at any conclusions beyond its 
 powers of expression. No man can be so much as not to 
 have mind and spirit lifted to greater heights through its 
 inspiration. — The Representative Significance of Form, xiii. 
 
 ART, EXPRESSING THOUGHT THROUGH IMITATION. 
 
 Are there any products which, however materially useful 
 they may subsequently prove to be, are, at any rate, not 
 planned, primarily, for the purpose of being useful? Of 
 course, there is but one answer to this question. Such 
 products are plentiful. Moreover, it is one invariable 
 characteristic of all of them that in certain features, to a 
 certain extent, their appearances are left in the condition 
 in which they are found in nature. This is the case even 
 with factors of a musical melody. The composer accepts 
 the different elements of movement and pitch as they come 
 to him, rendering them more useful not even by adding to 
 them articulation. Much more is the same fact evident 
 in poetry, the imitative, figurative, or descriptive language 
 of which is recognized to be successful according to the 
 degree of fidelity with which it recalls the sights of nature. 
 So too with the products of painting, sculpture, and of the 
 ornamental parts, at least, of architecture. Were forms 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 31 
 
 in these arts — and in principle the statement is applicable 
 to the arts of sound also — shaped or combined, as are most 
 implements and machines, into appearances wholly unnatu- 
 ral, they would necessarily suggest a material end intended to 
 be accomplished by them. But this they do not suggest, 
 for the very reason that their appearances are not changed 
 from those that are presented in nature. Here then we 
 come upon a clear point of agreement between the arts that 
 are the most finely and distinctively forms of nature, and 
 those that are the most finely and distinctively human. 
 There is an indissoluble connection between employing in a 
 product the appearances of nature and having it in a con- 
 dition in which it will pre-eminently direct attention to the 
 fact that it is used for the sole purpose of giving expression 
 to thought or feeling. An artificially shaped machine or 
 implement at once suggests the question, "What can it do? " 
 But a drawing or carving never suggests this question, but 
 rather, "What did the man who made this think about it, 
 or of it, that he should have reproduced it?" — Art in 
 Theory, vi. 
 
 ART FOR art's SAKE. 
 
 Whenever one uses a form either of sound or of sight in 
 order through it to express thought or feeling, a natural ten- 
 dency of mind causes him after a little to become interested 
 in the form and to develop its possibilities for its own sake. 
 It is this tendency that leads to all art ; and the fact furnishes 
 a degree of justification, though not to the extent that is 
 sometimes urged, for the maxim that enjoins interest in 
 "art for art's sake," even if by art, in this sense, be meant 
 that merely which has to do with the representation of 
 form. The truth of this statement is especially easy to 
 recognize as applied to painting and sculpture, partly be- 
 cause in them it is so evidently essential to have the forms 
 exactly imitative of those of nature, and partly because, 
 before the imitation necessitated can be successful, it so 
 evidently requires careful and scientific study. These 
 considerations do not justify a lack of interest in the sig- 
 nificance which a form may be made to express; but they 
 do necessitate, on the part of all who wish to understand 
 the subject, some knowledge, if not of a painter's tech- 
 nique, at least of his technical aims. Only in the degree 
 in which men have this knowledge, can they estimate a 
 painting from an artist's point of view, or have a right to 
 
32 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 an opinion concerning its workmanship. — Painting, Sculp- 
 ture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, xvi. 
 
 "art in theory," analysis of the book. 
 (Recapitulation.) In the introductory volume, "Art in 
 Theory," an attempt was made to derive a true conception of 
 the requirements of art from a study of certain facts and 
 opinions concerning it acknowledged by all, or held by 
 writers of authority. Guided by these criteria, nature 
 was first distinguished from art, and then the lower arts 
 from the higher. It was found that an essential char- 
 acteristic of these latter is what is known as form, but in 
 their cases a form producing always two apparently dif- 
 ferent effects, one derived from an imitation of external 
 phenomena, and the other from a communication of 
 thoughts and emotions. The first effect, tending to em- 
 phasize the form in itself, was said to be mainly, though 
 by no means exclusively, characteristic of classic art, and 
 the second effect, tending to emphasize the significance 
 in the form, was said to be mainly characteristic of romantic 
 art. It was also argued that the emphasizing of either 
 of these tendencies, if carried so far as to involve a neglect 
 of the other of them, is fatal to artistic excellence. In 
 indicating, then, the conception of artistic aims best tend- 
 ing to preserve the equilibrium between the two tendencies, 
 it was pointed out that art neither imitates nor communi- 
 cates in the most practically effective ways. Because aim- 
 ing to do both, its chief aim cannot be to do either the 
 one or the other. Art represents natural phenomena, 
 as one may say, as a means of representing thoughts and 
 emotions. Or, to express this differently, art emphasizes 
 representation, developing and elaborating the factors of 
 it in nature, and the possibilities of it in the mind. But 
 in doing this, art is using the same means and continuing 
 the same modes of expression as those that are attributed 
 by men to the creative and divine intelligence. The 
 impulse to art, therefore, may be considered creative 
 and divine. But as it neither imitates nor communicates 
 in the most usefully effective way, we must trace it less to 
 the useful than to the non-useful and so to what in ele- 
 mentary phases is called the play-impulse. This play- 
 impulse, even in dogs and kittens, to say nothing of apes, 
 tends to the imitation of that which seems interesting, 
 

 
 
 A Maori Festival, New Zealand 
 See pages p, lo, ii, 7J, Si -83, 88, 89, 91, 147, 148, 162, 227, 38s 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 33 
 
 attractive, and charming in one's surroundings. The same 
 impulse, when turned in the direction of art, inasmuch as 
 this always involves the use of form, tends also to imitation. 
 But an imitation of that which is interesting, attractive, 
 and charming in form, especially in form communicating 
 to mind and spirit the suggestions of a creative and 
 divine impulse, is nothing more nor less than a reproduction 
 of what men, when using the term in its highest sense, mean 
 by beauty. What is there in beauty, however, that it 
 should be used by the art-impulse when giving expression to 
 the mental and spiritual? A review, which follows, of the 
 history of opinion on the subject, reveals that the effects of 
 beauty are well-nigh universally attributed — not always 
 explicitly but certainly implicitly — in part to form, but in 
 part also to significance suggested by the form. In other 
 words, the charm exerted by beauty is exerted partly upon 
 the senses, because the elements of the form harmonize 
 with one another and with the physiological requirements 
 of the ear or eye, and partly upon the mind, because the 
 suggestions of these elements harmonize with psychological 
 requirements. The consequent definition reached is, that 
 "Beauty is a characteristic of any complex form of varied 
 elements, producing apprehensible unity {i. e., harmony or 
 likeness) of effects (i) upon the motive organs of sensation 
 in the ear or eye, or (2) upon the emotive sources of imagina- 
 tion in the mind, or (3) upon both the one and the other." 
 There are the best of reasons, therefore, why a creative and 
 divine impulse tending to imitation should reproduce beauty, 
 the mere existence of which alone may involve that appeal 
 to the mental and spiritual nature which is made by what 
 we term significance. But we must not forget that in 
 art the mind may do more than represent significance as 
 a secondary consideration, which would be the case did it 
 do so merely because, by way of accident, as it were, a cer- 
 tain significance was necessarily suggested by the form 
 used. The mind often represents thoughts and emotions 
 as a primary consideration, — that is, it decides upon them 
 first, and, afterwards, selects the forms through which to 
 communicate them. We are obliged, therefore, to know 
 something about the ways in which the mind communi- 
 cates or represents thoughts or emotions through any 
 forms whatever, irrespective of their being characterized 
 by beauty. The remainder of the book shows how, at 
 
34 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 different stages of the influence exerted by precisely the 
 same external phenomena, entirely different phases of 
 conscious thoughts and emotions are aroused to activity. 
 This activity is analyzed into that which primarily is 
 instinctive or spontaneous, is reflective or responsive, or 
 is a blending of both the others in what may be termed 
 the instinctively reflective or the emotive. It is shown that 
 for every phase of activity there is only one natural form 
 of expression; and that it is this form and no other which, 
 when artistically developed, i. e., developed with reference 
 to beauty, finds appropriate embodiment in one of the 
 five arts of Music, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, or Archi- 
 tecture. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 ART, ITS GENERAL EFFECTIVENESS. 
 
 Other products of men, products that are not distinc- 
 tively works of arts, sometimes have marvellous effects. 
 A machine, a galvanic battery, can electrify a body just 
 bereft of life into movements for a moment almost deceiv- 
 ing the senses into surmising life's return. But what are 
 such effects to those of art? men ask. What else but it 
 can put such spirit into matter which never yet had life that 
 the vitality can remain forever? — More than this, what 
 else can reach outside the forms in which it is embodied, 
 and electrify all beings that have souls? And when one 
 yields to arts of this kind, the highest homage that can be 
 bestowed upon the products of intelligence and skill, to 
 himself, at least, he seems to do so, recognizing not alone 
 that the finest and most distinctive qualities of mind have 
 been expended on them; not alone that they have issued 
 from an intellect exerting all its power, throned in the regal 
 right of all its functions ; not alone that they have involved 
 activities of mind at the sources of the useful and of the 
 ornamental arts combined. But he does so, because he 
 feels that such activities, when exercised conjointly, adjust- 
 ing thought to form and form to thought, necessitate, even 
 aside from any other consideration, a quality of action that 
 is not the same as that manifested by either of these 
 activities, when not combined. Gunpowder and a match 
 give neither of the two, nor both. No wonder then that 
 mental possibilities, united as in art, suggest a force and 
 brilliancy different in kind from that exhibited in any other 
 sphere. "I tell you," said King Henry VIII. to a noble- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 35 
 
 man who had brought him an accusation against the painter 
 Holbein, "I tell you, of seven peasants I can make as many- 
 lords, but of seven lords I could not make one Holbein." — 
 Art in Theory ^ vii. 
 
 ART, ITS HUMANIZING EFFECTS {see Under culture). 
 What a rebuke to the bigotry and the cruelty of the 
 Middle Ages are the countless products of the arts of those 
 periods, pleading constantly to the eye against the savage 
 customs of the times for the sweet but little-practised 
 virtues of justice and charity! Within our own century, 
 too, notwithstanding the traditions of society, the state, and 
 the church, which have often exerted all their powers to up- 
 hold and perpetuate slavery, aristocracy, and sectarianism, 
 recall how the modern novel chiefly, but assisted largely 
 by the modern picture, has not only changed the whole 
 trend of the world's thought with reference to these systems, 
 but has contributed, more, perhaps, than any other single 
 cause, to the practical reorganization of them, in accordance 
 with the dictates of enlightened intelligence. — The Repre- 
 sentative Significance of Form, xi. 
 
 ART, THE CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN SCIENCE AND 
 
 RELIGION (see ANALOGY IN ART, also under culture). 
 
 The moment that thought transcends the sphere possible 
 to knowledge, it gets out of the sphere of science. But, 
 when it gets out of this, what sphere, so long as it continues 
 to advance rationally, does it enter? What sphere but that 
 of religion? And think how large a part of human experi- 
 ence — experience which is not a result of what can strictly 
 be termed knowledge — is contained in this sphere ! Where 
 but in it can we find the impulses of conscience, the dic- 
 tates of duty, the cravings for sympathy, the aspira- 
 tions for excellence, the pursuit of ideals, the sense of 
 unworthiness, the desire for holiness, the feehng of depend- 
 ence upon a higher power, and all these together, exer- 
 cised in that which causes men to walk by faith, and not by 
 knowledge? The sphere certainly exists. Granting the 
 fact, let us ask what it is that can connect with this 
 sphere of faith the sphere of knowledge? Has any method 
 yet been found of conducting thought from the material 
 to the spiritual according to any process strictly scientific? 
 Most certainly not. There comes a place where there is a 
 great gulf fixed between the two. Now notice that the one 
 
36 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 who leads the conceptions of men across this gulf must, like 
 the great Master, never speak to them without a parable — 
 i. e., a parallel, an analogy, a correspondence, a comparison. 
 Did you ever think of the fact that, scientifically inter- 
 preted, it is not true that God is a father, or Christ a son of 
 God, or an elder brother of Christians, or the latter children 
 of Abraham? These are merely forms taken from earthly 
 relationships, in order to image spiritual relationships, 
 which, except in imagination, could not m anyway become 
 conceivable. This method of conceiving of conditions, 
 which may be great realities in the mental, ideal, spiritual 
 realm, through the representation of them in material form, 
 is one of the very first conditions of a religious conception. 
 But what is the method? It is the artistic method. Un- 
 less this could be used, science would stop at the brink of the 
 material with no means of going farther, and religion begin 
 at the brink of the spiritual with no means of finding any 
 other starting-point. Art differs from both science and 
 religion in cultivating imagination instead of knowledge, 
 as does the one, and instead of conduct, as does the other. 
 But notice, in addition to what has been said of its being 
 an aid to science, what an aid to religion is the ar- 
 tistic habit of looking upon every form in this material 
 world as full of analogies and correspondences, inspiring 
 conceptions and ideals spiritual in their nature, which 
 need only the impulse of conscience to direct them 
 into the manifestation of the spiritual in conduct. This 
 habit of mind is what art, when legitimately developed, 
 always produces. It not only necessitates, as applied to 
 mere form — and in this it differs from religion and resembles 
 science — great accuracy in observation, but also, as applied 
 to that which the form images — and in this it differs from 
 science and resembles religion — it necessitates the most exact 
 and minute fulfilment of the laws of analogy and correspond- 
 ence. These laws, which, because difficult and sometimes 
 impossible to detect, some imagine not to exist, nevertheless 
 do exist; and they give, not only to general effects, but 
 to every minutest different element of tone, cadence, line, 
 and color, a different and definite meaning, though often 
 greatly modified, of course, when an element is differently 
 combined with other elements. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 Science has to do mainly with matter, religion with spirit, 
 and art with both ; for by matter we mean the external world 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 37 
 
 and its appearances, which art must represent, and by 
 spirit we mean the internal world of thoughts and emotions, 
 which also art must represent. The foundations of art, 
 therefore, rest in the realms both of science and of religion; 
 and its superstructure is the bridge between them. Nor 
 can you get from the one to the other, or enjoy the whole 
 of the territory in which humanity was made to live, with- 
 out using the bridge. Matter and spirit are like water and 
 steam. They are separate in reality: we join them in 
 conception. So with science and religion, and the concep- 
 tion which brings both into harmonious union is a normal 
 development of only art. — Idem. 
 
 A religious conception cannot become artistic until 
 imagination has presented it in a form which manifests an 
 observation of external appearances and an information 
 with reference to them as accurate, in some regards, as are 
 those of science. Nor can a scientific conception become 
 artistic before imagination has haloed it about with sugges- 
 tions as inspired, in some regards, as are those of religion. — 
 The Representative Significance of Form, vi. 
 
 ART vs. NATURE. 
 
 In the degree in which significance is thus introduced 
 into a painting, it necessarily calls attention to something 
 that could not be suggested by the objects if depicted 
 merely as they exist in nature. This something is an effect 
 of rearrangement in accordance with a mental purpose. 
 The objects as reproduced in art are thus made representa- 
 tive of the artist, of man; and, therefore, it is that, in a true 
 sense, the result may be said to belong to the humanities. 
 If we could imagine a picture in which the imitation was so 
 accurate that no one could tell the difference between it 
 and nature, we should have a result that, on the surface 
 would not reveal itself to be the product of a man. The 
 effect would be indistinguishable from that of nature. 
 But art is different from nature; and, interesting and desir- 
 able as is vsuccess in imitation, clever deception is not 
 synonymous with artistic skill. It must not be forgotten 
 that, beyond imitation, and not at all interfering with it, 
 something else needs to be superimposed before the art- 
 product can be crowned with that which is indicative of its 
 having a right to the highest rank. — Painting, Sculpture^ 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, xiv. 
 
38 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 ARTISTIC BASED UPON NATURAL REQUIREMENTS. 
 
 It is not meant to be maintained here that all architects 
 who first used the dome or pointed spire, or windows 
 with round or pointed arches, did so because they had 
 personally seen among savage tribes similar constructions, 
 which they consciously imitated. The same cause that, 
 among the savages, would operate to make those using 
 cheap material build with a round or pointed arch, would 
 operate also among those using costly material. All that 
 it is intended to maintain, is, that these several forms are 
 first adopted in order to meet certain requirements of 
 nature; and afterwards are imitated and ornamentally 
 developed in order to meet artistic requirements. — Idenij 
 XX. 
 
 ARTISTIC CONCEPTIONS NECESSITATE FORM. 
 
 A scientific formulation — mathematic or geometric, 
 for instance — usually indicates the interdependence of the 
 conditions for which it stands without conveying the 
 slightest conception of their appearances. In the ideality 
 which characterizes art, this is not so; the imagination 
 conforms the ideas to the outlines of certain known objects, 
 events, or experiences. Artistic conceptions are therefore 
 necessarily connected in thought with form, i. e., with a 
 visible or audible effect which is referred to, or is imitated, 
 in order to express them, as, in such cases, they must be 
 expressed, by way of representation. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, xii. 
 
 ARTISTIC NATURES {see also sentiment). 
 All men have emotion. All may be strongly moved, and, 
 in such circumstances, the minds of all may be subject to 
 that subconscious action which is one source of imagination. 
 But when we try to answer the question, — To what extent 
 may one as compared with another be subject to this? we 
 find the differences between men almost world-wide. We 
 must conclude, therefore, that large numbers are by nature 
 excluded from the sphere of action of the artist. They are 
 too cautious, too much under the control of consciousness, 
 or, as we say, self -consciousness, to give themselves up to the 
 abandon of subconscious mental activity. It is not only 
 great orators who lose themselves in their subjects before 
 they become eloquent. Sculptors, painters, and musicians 
 have a similar experience. "If you think how you are to 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 39 
 
 write,** said Mozart, "you will never write anything worth 
 hearing. I write because I cannot help it." Viewed in this 
 light, we may trace to the power that Shakespeare and 
 Goethe had of objectifying and so of forgetting themselves, 
 not only the effects but the causes also of their greatness. 
 It might be almost said that faith in the results of that 
 which is beyond the sphere of consciousness enables one to 
 reach the aesthetic paradise no less than the heavenly. 
 Especially in these intensely practical times of factories 
 and furnaces, what but the ability to preserve one's rela- 
 tionship with something hidden, with some ideal that 
 cannot be smelt or touched, with something real though in 
 realms of mystery, — what but this can keep the soul in a 
 region where results of art are possible? And if some by 
 nature be excluded from the sphere of action of the artist, 
 it must be equally true that some by nature are included 
 in it. And, now and then, their products may evince this 
 fact. From the realm of their nativity they can be banished 
 wholly neither by the deadening effects of practical life, 
 nor by the lack of the quickening influences of assthetic 
 education. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 ARTISTIC vs. SCIENTIFIC MENTAL ACTION {see TEMPERAMENT). 
 
 All children, because their brains are active, are artistic 
 in their tendencies. The very essence of artistic imitation 
 is mimicry; and what child is entirely destitute of this? 
 Very nearly all the young pass through a dramatic age, in 
 which they flower into poetry; and whether the blossoms 
 soon fade or bloom perennially depends mainly upon the 
 permanence within them of the characteristics thus mani- 
 fested. When men arrive at maturity, the artistic mind, as 
 distinguished from the scientific, continues to form theories 
 before it reasons them out, and to imagine truth before it in- 
 vestigates. If one naturally of an artistic temperament ever 
 can reach results that are scientific, this term "scientific" 
 cannot be applied to the movements of his mind prepara- 
 tory to these. Instead of advancing step by step toward 
 his end, he first jumps to his conclusions, and then turns 
 backward to discover the intervening steps. Very difficult, 
 too, as a rule, is his task in bringing these to the light. 
 Through the mist-hung marshes which the wings of his 
 imagination have borne him across, he must flounder on 
 foot, picking his pathway painfully until he reach his 
 
40 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 starting-point. Yet if he do not do this, his own explana- 
 tions of what he has accompHshed will be more apt to entitle 
 him to rank as a visionary among idealists than as a guide 
 among practical thinkers. Notice, nevertheless, that the 
 method of mental action just described is that which is most 
 allied to the method which the world usually attributes to 
 genius. A genius perceives a specific effect in nature, 
 and surmises thence a truth or principle which is generic. 
 Newton is said to have surmised the law of gravitation 
 from the sight of a single apple falling from a tree; and 
 almost every one who has invented any kind of a machine 
 has conceived of it as a whole before he has tried to construct 
 its separate parts. As everywhere else, therefore, the 
 difference indicated here between the artistic and the 
 scientific mind is one of degree and not of kind. The artist 
 works almost exclusively according to the method just 
 indicated; so the world supposes that he must be a genius 
 necessarily. The scientific man has very much to do be- 
 sides surmising and inventing; so the world confines the 
 title genius to the few scientific minds pre-eminent in doing 
 these latter. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 artists' love for their own products. 
 
 The story of Pygmalion who fell in love with his own 
 statue of Galatea is merely an artistic embodiment of the 
 conception of the naturally emotive susceptibility of the 
 true artist. It is doubtful if one of these ever lived who 
 lacked the tendency developed in the tale. It is doubtful 
 if one without the capacity for falling thoroughly in love 
 with his own product could ever be an artist. God made 
 men, as we are told, in His own image, and the highest manli- 
 ness results when His spirit becomes incarnated in them. So 
 the artist forms art in his own image; his works reflect his 
 thought or feeling; and the highest excellence follows only 
 in the degree in which his soul has found complete embodi- 
 ment in them. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 artists need breadth of culture. 
 
 The highest result, as art is, of human intelligence and 
 skill, it cannot be produced when only part of the highest 
 possibilities of manhood are engaged upon it. It needs all 
 the resources that a man can command, as well as all the 
 facility that he can acquire through the education that 
 enables him to command them. — Idem, xv. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 41 
 
 ARTISTS, SOME SUCH BY NATURE. 
 
 Every art is developed by making a study of methods 
 natural to exceptional men who, because they take to them 
 naturally, do not need to cultivate them. — Essay on Art and 
 Logical Form. 
 
 ARTISTS, THEIR STUDY OF NATURE. 
 
 Who does not acknowledge that one characteristic of all 
 great artists, especially of those who are leaders in their arts, 
 is the faithful study that they give to nature. We may not 
 admire the social customs of ancient Greece that allowed 
 its sculptors frequent opportunities to observe the un- 
 clothed forms of both the sexes; we may shrink from 
 believing the story of a Guido murdering his model in 
 order to prepare for a picture of the crucifixion; or of a 
 David coolly sketching the faces of his own friends when 
 put to death amid the horrors of the French Revolution; 
 yet, in all these cases, there is an artistic lesson accom- 
 panying the moral warning. It was not in vain that 
 Morland's easel was constantly surrounded by representa- 
 tives of the lower classes; that Hogarth always had his 
 pencil with him on the streets and in the coffee-houses; 
 or that, morning after morning, Corot's canvas caught its 
 colors long before the eastern sky grew bright with sunlight. 
 Or, if we turn to literature, it is not an insignificant fact 
 that Shakespeare and his contemporaries, who gave form 
 to the modern drama, as well as Goethe, who records in 
 his Wahrheit und Dichtung the way in which he spent his 
 j'-outh in Frankfort and his age in Weimar, were for years 
 the associates both of the audiences and actors in city 
 theatres; or that Fielding, who gave form to the modern 
 novel, was the justice of a police court. High art is dis- 
 tinctively a form of nature — a form that is this in the sense 
 of being perceptible in nature, or at least directly suggested 
 by it. — Art in Theory, 11. 
 
 ARTISTS vs. ARTISANS. 
 
 It is wellnigh universally recognized that the poet is not 
 a reporter, nor the painter a photographer, nor any artist 
 at all entitled to the name, a mere copyist. For this reason 
 it is felt that while, in the main, he is a careful observer of 
 outward appearances, he, too, as well as the workman in 
 so-called useful art, must have ability to penetrate in some 
 way to something underl3ang these ; that pathos in ballads, 
 
42 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 passion in dramas, groupings on canvas, attitudes in marble, 
 arches in cathedrals, cannot be produced so as to have 
 anything approximating an artistic effect — be produced 
 so as to cause forms to fulfil both physical and mental laws, 
 — if their authors have either studied the sounds and sights 
 of nature to the exclusion of its operations, — under which 
 term may be included its effects upon thought and feeling 
 as well as upon matter, — or have studied the latter to the 
 exclusion of the former. Men name the producer of the 
 highest assthetic results an artist. By this term they dis- 
 tinguish him from one whose skill exhibits a more partial 
 exercise of his various possibilities, whom they term, if his 
 products repeat merely the appearances of nature, an 
 artisan; if they repeat merely its operations, a mechanic. 
 The highest (Esthetic art must do both. — Idem, ii. 
 
 ARTISTS vs. SEERS {see also RELIGION VS. ART). 
 
 In general, it may be said that most men's conception of a 
 distinctively religious teacher, to say nothing of a prophet, 
 excludes anything .supposed to call particular attention 
 to his own conscious intellection, or even to his own intel- 
 lect. He may possess, and add to his influence by possess- 
 ing, accuracy of observation, breadth of information, and 
 brilliancy of style, but it is felt that the value of his work 
 does not depend mainly upon them. He is supposed to be 
 guided to his utterance by an agency above him, which can, 
 occasionally, make the words of an ignorant fisherman or a 
 weak child as enlightening and uplifting as those coming 
 from the lips of the most learned scholar and skilful advocate. 
 
 Notice, however, that just the opposite is true in the 
 case of art. For success in it, accuracy of observation 
 is essential, because the artist derives from nature not 
 only his suggestions, but the very form of the image which 
 he must use in indicating them. So with reference to 
 breadth of information. When the results of subconscious 
 mental action must be represented through the results of 
 conscious observation, information obtained through this 
 latter is indispensable. Again, too, because supposed, in a 
 degree not true of a religious leader, to work out his concep- 
 tions according to conscious mental methods, it is felt that 
 the artist must have more than a usual amount of mental 
 ability. In fact, it is felt that there is, and should be, an 
 immense difference between the motive underl3dng the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 43 
 
 effect produced by the preacher and by the actor. The 
 actor we admire, as we do every artist, on account of a 
 manifestation of acquired faciHty in holding the mirror of 
 the subconscious as also of the conscious mind up to nature 
 so that each mind shall work with apparent spontaneity 
 as regards both impression and expression; and no matter 
 how much he may reveal of the results of subconscious 
 action, he is either supposed to have attained these results 
 through lofty flights of his own self -impelled imagination, 
 or else, if presumed to have received them precisely as 
 prophets receive religious truth, to have rendered them 
 effective through acquired skill, by means of which he has 
 been enabled to give them form. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, vii. 
 
 ARTS, THE, ARE ATTRIBUTABLE TO DIFFERENT EFFECTS UPON 
 
 THE MIND. 
 
 As related to the processes of representative art, the mind 
 or the imagination, which is the faculty of the mind princi- 
 pally engaged in the work, acts, as it were, Hke a mirror. At 
 different stages, as the trains of influence pass by, it flashes 
 back that which necessarily takes a form analogous either 
 to music, poetry (oratory), painting, sculpture, or iarchi- 
 tecture. We shall find, in short, that all these arts are 
 elaborations of instinctive modes of expression which, in 
 certain circumstances, the mind is forced to adopt, all 
 representative art being, as Opie says of painting in the first 
 of his " Lectures " upon that subject, "a language that must 
 exist, in some greater or less degree, whenever the human in- 
 tellect approaches a certain, and that by no means elevated, 
 standard." — Art in Theory, xvi. 
 
 ARTS, THE, AS INFLUENCED BY BOTH NATURE AND MIND. 
 
 Let us represent the contents of the mind by the floating 
 but, except for outside influence, stationary ice in some bay 
 or inlet, and at the same time represent that which flows 
 into the mind by the waves and currents entering this 
 bay or inlet from an ocean. Let us observe what is the 
 natural order of development of the relations sustained 
 between the waters thus forced inward and the ice. Is 
 it not something Hke this? — At the point nearest the ocean, 
 the waves sweeping over the ice break off and bear up and 
 down small portions of it, but with such force that the ice 
 forms but an insignificant, perhaps an indistinguishable, 
 
44 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 part of the effect of the waves as a whole. This is the condi- 
 tion corresponding to that of music. A Httle farther inward, 
 the floating ice covers the waves. We see mainly the ice, 
 but it is moving, and its movement indicates that of the 
 water under it. This is the condition found in poetry. 
 Still farther inward, the portions of broken ice, crowded 
 together by the force of the waves, begin to offer mani- 
 fest resistance. Up to this point one could hardly dis- 
 tinguish from a distance the ice from the waves. Here it 
 becomes almost impossible to confound the two; for at 
 one place the weight on the surface is seen crushing down 
 the surf, and at another the surf is seen breaking through 
 and above the surface. This is the state of things in 
 painting and sculpture. Last of all, at places nearest the 
 shore, the force of the waves seems to be crushed out com- 
 pletely, yet the effects produced by them are abundantly 
 apparent in the great moveless heaps of ice resting against 
 the water-line. This represents the condition in archi- 
 tecture. Let us now notice whether this order of develop- 
 ment in the relations existing between the influence from 
 without and the possessions within the mind has any basis 
 in facts; first in physical facts, afterwards in mental facts. 
 To begin with, are there any physical facts which justify 
 us in comparing the action of outer effects upon the mind 
 to that of waves upon something stationary; and if so, is 
 there any reason why these waves, at their greatest, can be 
 represented in music, and, at their least, in architecture? 
 To both these questions we can give an affirmative answer. 
 Physicists tell us that the acoustic nerve is surrounded by 
 a fluid back of the drum of the ear; also that the optic 
 nerve is surrounded by a corresponding humor back of 
 the crystalline lens of the eye. They tell us that when- 
 ever sounds or sights reach intelligence, they are conveyed 
 to it because, as a fact, these nerves are physically shaken 
 through the influence of waves from without which strike 
 the ear drum or the crystalline lens. So much for the 
 first question; now for the second. Physicists tell us 
 also that the waves vibrating to shake the acoustic nerve 
 are so large that, at the least, about sixteen of them, and 
 at the most, about forty thousand, can move in a second 
 of time; but that, on the other hand, the waves shaking 
 the retina are so minute that, at the least, about four hun- 
 dred and eighty-three trillions, and, at the most, seven 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 45 
 
 hundred and twenty-seven trillions, can move in a second. 
 These assertions indicate that the sensation of being most 
 shaken, shaken by the largest waves, or when the influence 
 has most force, can be represented or communicated better — 
 and any nervous mother with half a dozen small boys will 
 confirm the statement from her own experience — through 
 sound than through sight. Whether we consider quantity 
 or quality, there is more of sound represented in music 
 than in poetry. By consequence, of the two arts, the 
 former represents better the first effect of a motive per se; 
 i. e., the most powerful, the least exhausted effect of any 
 influence from without, considered merely as an influence. 
 Oratory appeals to sight as well as to hearing. For this 
 reason it represents a later effect than poetry. Of those 
 arts which, because they appeal to sight alone, represent 
 effects in sight still later than oratory, painting evidently 
 comes first. It uses more briUiancy and variety of color, 
 necessitating larger vibrations — the largest of all, for in- 
 stance, producing extreme red — and also greater dependence 
 upon everything conditioned directly by influence of this 
 kind than does either sculpture or architecture. — Essentials 
 of Esthetics, ix. 
 
 In its lack of the imitative element, and therefore in 
 having forms that recall nature more by way of association 
 than of comparison, architecture resembles music. Madame 
 de Stael termed it "frozen music"; and with our present 
 view of the subject, we may perceive the appropriateness 
 of her metaphor. In music, the influence coming from 
 without moves so rapidly and freely that, as contrasted 
 with it, the mind is hardly conscious of its own ideas. In 
 architecture, on the contrary, this influence seems so slight 
 that of it the mind is hardly conscious. That which flows 
 in the one art may be said to be congealed in the other, and 
 the artistic representation of each state of consciousness 
 evinces this. The medium of music moves; that of archi- 
 tecture stands. Because of the lack of balance in both 
 arts between the consciousness of the influence from without 
 and that of the ideas within, the connection between influ- 
 ence and ideas is not, in either art, always apparent. Many, 
 in fact, fancy that music represents no ideas, and architec- 
 ture no influences derived from the forms of nature. But 
 the truth is that, without both arts, the representations of 
 the different phases of consciousness, developing, one after 
 
4^ AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 another, as has been shown, would be incomplete. The 
 two arts are expressive respectively of the two extremes of 
 this, — of those misty border lands of apprehension where 
 external influence appears and where it disappears. Be- 
 tween these two extremes, the motive from without and the 
 ideas within are more evenly balanced. The effect in the 
 intellect (inter and lego), as jointly influenced by both, leads, 
 when the consciousness of the influence from without 
 exerted upon the emotions is the stronger, to comparison, 
 tending, as in poetry and oratory, to identifying the two; 
 and, when the consciousness of the ideas within, deliber- 
 ately modifying by reflection the influence from without, 
 is the stronger, to comparison also, but with more realiza- 
 tion of a contrast between the two, as is the case in land- 
 scape gardening, painting, and sculpture. Taken together, 
 the arts that have been mentioned represent every possible 
 effect produced in the mind as emotions, intellect, and will 
 successively receive and modify the influence that the audi- 
 ble or visible forms of nature exert upon it. The expres- 
 sional series is complete all the way from where, in music, we 
 heed the roaring of the waves of influence as they dash upon 
 apprehension, to where, in architecture, we perceive the 
 spray that congeals in fairy shapes above the place where 
 their force has been spent. — Art in Theory, xix. 
 
 In the moods represented in music and poetry, the in- 
 fluence from without is recognized in consciousness mainly 
 because the thoughts move with it. This movement, there- 
 fore, is appropriately represented in musical tones and poetic 
 words that follow one another in time. In the moods rep- 
 resented in painting, sculpture, and architecture, however, 
 the mind is prompted to conceive of the influence as sepa- 
 rate and different from the ideas; frequently, indeed, as of- 
 fering a contrast to them. The influence from without is 
 recognized in consciousness mainly because, as contrasted 
 with the influence, the thoughts are relatively, though not 
 absolutely, stationary. Consider now how these facts 
 must be represented. If one wish to give expression to a 
 consciousness of an external source of influence which is 
 separate and different from the ideas within his mind, he 
 can do this effectively only through using an external me- 
 dium which alone is clearly separate and different from them. 
 Again, a contrast is always revealed most clearly when ob- 
 jects are viewed not one at a time, but two or more at a time. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 47 
 
 If one wish, therefore, to represent a consciousness of con- 
 trast, especially in connection with that of a continuation of 
 a difference between the external world and his own ideas of 
 it, he can best do this through using a medium that presents 
 objects not in succession, like the words of a poem, but side 
 by side in space like the forms on the canvas of a picture. 
 And if he wish, again, to represent the fact that his own 
 ideas, though affected by the influence, are not swept away 
 or onward by it ; but that whatever effects are produced are 
 confined to suggestions prompted by the objects in nature 
 that continue to stand immediately before him, he can best 
 represent this fact too through using a medium that will stay 
 thought like a scene rather than hurry it on Hke a story. — 
 Idem, XIX. 
 
 ASSOCIATION, AS AN ART METHOD {see also COMPARISON). 
 
 Association and comparison, however, as has been pointed 
 out in former essays of this series, are in all cases very closely 
 allied, and sometimes are practically inseparable. Associa- 
 tion is based upon suggested likeness in the underl5dng 
 principle exemplified in two things which are apparently 
 different. Comparison is based upon apparent likeness in 
 the things themselves. Whether, as a fact, we connect 
 them by way of association or of comparison, depends 
 partly upon our point of view, and partly upon the degree of 
 external similarity between them. Sometimes we associate 
 things that are different in specific details, because they are 
 connected with some identical general effect. Thus we 
 associate the moon and the stars, because both are con- 
 nected with the general effect of the night-time ; or hens and 
 turkeys, because both are connected with the general 
 effect of a barn-yard. Yet while this is true, observe also 
 that, in case we be thinking of the heavenly bodies, we can 
 also compare the moon and stars, because, from that point 
 of view, we can find many regards in which in specific 
 details the two are alike, and so, in case we be thinking of 
 fowls, we can compare hens and turkeys. Again, in case 
 a Greek column supporting a heavy entablature be perceived 
 to be like a Gothic column supporting a heavy arch, in one 
 regard alone, namely, in being large in size, then we can 
 say that the one column suggests the other by way of 
 association. But in case the Greek column be perceived to 
 be like another Greek column in most regards or in many 
 
48 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 regards, then we can say that the one definitely recalls the 
 other by way of comparison. Moreover, in case we have 
 learned that the Greek column is large in order to hold up a 
 heavy weight, then we can infer that the Gothic column is 
 large in order to do the same thing; and we may say that 
 the latter, by way of association, represents the same general 
 idea, or conception, of strength in support which we have 
 originally derived from the former. But if the latter column 
 as well as the former be Greek, that is, if both columns 
 manifest the same details of appearance, then we may say 
 that the latter not only represents the same idea or concep- 
 tion of strength in support as does the former, but that it 
 does this by way of comparison as well as of association. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, i. 
 
 BALUSTRADE, REPRESENTING A FLAT ROOF. 
 
 What does a balustrade as thus indicated represent? 
 What is it for? What but to keep people from falling over? 
 But if they need to be kept from this, they must be expected 
 to walk on the roof behind the balustrade. But how could 
 they walk on a roof unless it were fiat? A few questions 
 like this will lead to the inference that a balustrade neces- 
 sarily represents a flat roof. Now, if we compare with this 
 inference, the fact that this sort of ornamentation is recog- 
 nized by almost everybody as, on the whole, the most 
 satisfactory for a wall supporting a flat roof, we shall have 
 obtained at least one proof that when by conscious design 
 or unconscious accident the architect faithfully represents 
 actual conditions, he does exactly what will fulfil the artistic 
 conceptions of the majority of people. — Idem, xix. 
 
 BEAUTIFUL, THE, VS. THE ARTISTIC (see ART AND BEAUTY). 
 
 The artistic may result from any isolated proof of crafts- 
 manship. Not so with the beautiful. It is general in its 
 eft'ects, and these transcend those of the craftsman. The 
 light that it possesses is like that of a halo. It illumines 
 everything of which it forms a part, its influence on the 
 mind extending to the whole mental environment, giving 
 suggestions to imagination, stimulus to aspiration, and fill- 
 ing every allied department and recess of energy with that 
 subtle force which men attribute to inspiration. It is 
 merely in accordance with a law of nature, therefore, that, 
 as a fact, all such statues, pictures, poems, buildings of past 
 ages as are universally considered to be great conform to 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 49 
 
 the laws of ethics almost as fully as to the laws of aesthetics, 
 ' — ^in other words, that one test of greatness in art has always 
 been its influence upon morals. — Essay on Art and Morals. 
 
 BEAUTIFUL, THE, VS. THE USEFUL IN ARTS. 
 
 The question, as applied to sights or sounds, suggests 
 at once that when a man, not for a useful but, ... for an 
 aesthetic end, reproduces these, he must do so mainly 
 because something about them has interested, attracted, 
 and, as we say, charmed him. There is one word that we 
 are accustomed to apply to any form, whether of sight or of 
 sound, that attracts and charms us. It is the word beautiful 
 . . . To-day, everywhere, it seems to be conceded that 
 arts of the highest class should reproduce mainly, at least, 
 and some seem to think solely, such phenomena of nature 
 as are beautiful. . . . For a sufficient reason then did the 
 Ahh6 Du Bos in 1719, in his ''Reflexions critique sur la 
 Po^sie et la Peinture, " first apply to the arts the term 
 *'Les Beaux Arts." — The Essentials of ^Esthetics, 11. 
 
 BEAUTIFUL VS. POPULAR STYLE. 
 
 And people call, and most of them think, the prevailing 
 style beautiful, merely because it happens to be current and 
 popular. They are so constituted that, consciously or 
 unconsciously, they are unable to resist the tide that, ap- 
 parently, is bearing along every one else. When the same 
 tendencies appear in art it strikes me that the critic who 
 is of value to the world is the man who, in case public opin- 
 ion be setting in the wrong direction, is able to resist it, is 
 able to look beneath the surface, analyze the effects, detect 
 the errors, put together his conclusions, and have indepen- 
 dence enough to express them. When the current theory is 
 riding straight toward the brink, he is the man who fore- 
 sees the danger, screws down the brakes, and turns the 
 steeds the other way — not the sentimentalist irresponsibly 
 swept into folly by the fury of the crowd, or the demagog 
 whooping its shibboleth to the echo, because, forsooth, 
 he must be popular. — Essay on Art and Education, 
 
 BEAUTY AND ANALOGY IN ART (see also ANALOGY). 
 
 Our standards of beauty, concerning which the reader may 
 consult Chapters X. to XIV. of "Art in Theory," are derived 
 primarily from certain forms of nature, which, because 
 attractive and charming in themselves, cause men to like 
 to look at them and to think about them. Accordingly, 
 
50 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 if a man wish to produce forms of art which men will like 
 to look at and to think about, it is merely a dictate of 
 policy, and, if he be an artist, it is generally a dictate of 
 preference, for him to select these forms for his models; 
 and in the degree in which he reproduces them, or any effects 
 analogous to theirs, his product will have beauty. What is 
 to prevent his selecting them because, viewed in one aspect, 
 they are beautiful; and yet also selecting them because, 
 viewed in another aspect, they, as well as all other natural 
 forms, are analogical? Certainly there is no conflict be- 
 tween the conception that beauty is of paramount aesthetic 
 importance, and the conception that the effects obtained 
 through the use of beauty should be analogical. — The 
 Representative Significance of Fornix xii. 
 
 BEAUTY, ATTRIBUTED TO BOTH FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
 Let us recall a woman, in prominent position, of great 
 beauty of form and excellence of character, a woman with 
 the reputation, say, of Queen Louise of Prussia, the mother 
 of the first Emperor William. Here was one whose form 
 and face were of such a nature that, owing solely to their 
 effects upon the organs of sight, they would cause almost 
 any observer of ordinary taste, however ignorant of whom 
 or of what she was, to declare her to be beautiful. But, 
 behind and above the attractions of her mere appearance, 
 she had such a character, such mental and sympathetic 
 traits, that none of her own family, intimately acquainted 
 with these, would have been willing to admit that she was 
 beautiful to others in as deep and spiritual a sense as to 
 themselves. But to what would their unwillingness to 
 admit this be owing, except to a subtle belief in a phase of 
 beauty dependent upon effects exerted not upon physical 
 organs, but upon mind and soul? At the same time, had 
 one of their number been blind, all the others would have 
 regretted the impossibility of this one's recognizing her 
 beauty as they did. But to what would this feeling be 
 owing, except to an inward conviction that beauty is a 
 result of effects coming from form as well as from character ; 
 and, not only this, but also from both of them when com- 
 bined. — Art in Theory, xii. 
 
 This combination of mental effects with those of form 
 can be recognized more clearly in connection with poetry. 
 In this art, besides the beauty which is due to phraseology, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 51 
 
 as manifested in the choice and sequence of words, and in 
 various developments of assonance, alliteration, rhythm, 
 and rhyme, everybody acknowledges that there is also a 
 beauty dependent upon the thought, the proof of which is 
 that this beauty is frequently as great in prose as in poetry. 
 But from what does this beauty spring? Clearly and un- 
 mistakably from a combination of the effects of recollection, 
 association, and suggestion, assuming concrete form in the 
 imagination; in other words, from the harmonious effects 
 of many different forms, some coming from without and 
 some from within the mind, some perceptible to sight or 
 recalled by memory as once perceptible to sight, and some, 
 according to the laws of the mind, merely conjured by fancy. 
 As a rule, too, the wider apart the spheres are from which 
 these effects are derived, introducing that which is un- 
 expected and surprising, the more striking is the beauty 
 resulting from their combination, as where those that are 
 extremely material are united to those that are extremely 
 mental, e. g., 
 
 Still as a slave before his lord, 
 The ocean hath no blast; 
 
 His great bright eye most silently 
 Up to the moon is cast. 
 
 The Ancient Mariner: Coleridge. 
 — Essentials of Esthetics, 11. 
 
 If men think with the classicists of the extreme type that 
 the chief end of art is imitation, either of classic models or 
 of nature, is it not because, consciously or unconsciously, 
 they hold to a belief that beauty is conditioned mainly 
 upon form? And if, on the contrary , they think with the 
 romanticists that the chief end of art is the expression 
 of ideas, is it not because they believe that beauty is 
 a result of thought or feeUng either of the human mind 
 as in art, or of the creative mind, as, according to the 
 Platonists, in nature? The inference, therefore, from 
 what has been said hitherto, is that there must be some 
 who attribute beauty to form; and some who attribute it to 
 the thought or feeHng expressed in the form, with a proba- 
 biUty also of the existence of some who attribute it partly 
 to the one source and partly to the other. — Art in Theory, x. 
 
 BEAUTY ATTRIBUTED TO HARMONY OF COMPLEX EFFECTS. 
 
 The phase of unity appealing to scientific apprehension 
 is usually the basis of conscious or unconscious classifica- 
 
52 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 tion as it is termed; that appealing to philosophic compre- 
 hension is usually the basis of what, if distinguished at all 
 from classification, is termed systemization ; and that ap- 
 pealing to aesthetic appreciation can be defined by no better 
 term, perhaps, than harmony, as the word is used not in a 
 technical but in a general sense. As we shall find presently, 
 it is the phase of unity that we have in harmony, which, as 
 manifested in connection with a variety of complex effects, 
 produces the result that is termed beauty. — Art in Theory y 
 
 XII. 
 
 The highest beauty, in all its different phases, results, as 
 is the case in other departments of excellence, from har- 
 mony in effects. Analyzing the elements of these effects, 
 carries with it the additional conclusion that, so far as 
 beauty is physical, it results when sounds, shapes, or colors 
 harmonize together and in such ways that their combina- 
 tions harmonize with the natural requirements of the 
 physical senses — ears or eyes — that are addressed; that, 
 so far as beauty is psychical, it results when the thoughts 
 and feelings suggested or expressed through forms harmonize 
 together, and also with the natural requirements of the 
 mind addressed; and that, so far as beauty is both physical 
 and psychical, it results when all the elements entering into 
 both physical and psychical effects harmonize together, and 
 also with the combined requirements of both the senses and 
 the mind. In this latter case, it will be observed that the 
 complete beauty which results necessitates something more 
 than that which is either formal or expressional. It can 
 be obtained in the degree only in which a form beautiful 
 in itself fits a beautiful ideal conjured in the mind by the 
 imagination as a result of a harmonious combination of 
 thoughts and feelings. To express all this in language as 
 concise as possible, we may say that beauty is a char- 
 acteristic of any complex form of varied elements producing 
 apprehensible unity {i. e., harmony or likeness) of effects 
 upon the motive organs of sensation in the ear or eye, 
 or upon the emotive sources of imagination in the mind; 
 or upon both the one and the other. — Idem, xiv. 
 
 The essential element of beauty is harmony resulting from 
 complexity of effects, and the greater the number of the 
 effects upon the mind that can be added to effects upon 
 the senses, the greater, at times, is the amount of the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 53 
 
 beauty. A single tone gains in beauty, as has been said, 
 when compounded of several different partial tones; but 
 it is usually more beautiful when heard in connection with 
 a melody or chord or series of chords that multiply the 
 complexity many scores of times. The tone is still more 
 beautiful when, in addition to this, it resembles, so as 
 clearly to represent, some natural or conventional method 
 of expression, and therefore some effect of emotion, and 
 in connection with this a combination of the effects of 
 many different emotions. So with poems, pictures, statues, 
 and buildings; they are all made more beautiful, the more 
 their harmony results from effects of apparent complexity 
 in the form, and more beautiful still, the more, in addition 
 to this, it results from the mental effects of images recalled 
 in memory or conjured by imagination, as well as of infinite 
 ranges and spheres of these. In fact, this increase of 
 beauty always continues up to the point where confusion 
 begins. This is true even of the blending of effects from 
 different arts, as where to those of melody are added those 
 first of harmony, then of poetry, then of acting, then of 
 dancing, then of painting, then of sculpture, then of archi- 
 tecture, till, finally, we have all the components of a Wag- 
 nerian opera. In all such cases, up to the point where 
 confusion begins — but it must be confessed that with some, 
 perhaps with most people, it begins long before the list is 
 completed — there is an apprehensible increase of the dis- 
 tinctly aesthetic influence. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 BEAUTY, HUMAN, ATTRIBUTABLE TO BOTH FORM AND SIGNIFI- 
 CANCE {see also taste, discrepancies in). 
 As related to the human form, one must always bear in 
 mind that its proportions are expressive of significance. 
 All the members, whether connected with forehead, eyes, 
 ears, nose, mouth, chin, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, 
 waist, hips, legs, calves, ankles, feet, are adapted to some 
 purpose; in our minds they are associated with this pur- 
 pose; and seem beautiful or ugly, on account, partly, of the 
 way in which they fulfil it, and partly, of the deficiency 
 or superabundance of the characteristics supposed to be 
 represented by them, in case they are relatively smaller 
 or larger than is usual. This is true as applied to combina- 
 tions, the beauty of which is ordinarily judged to be de- 
 pendent upon form solely. For instance, take those 
 
54 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 outlines of the countenance composing what are ordinarily 
 described as regular features. When, as in these, after 
 drawing vertical and horizontal lines across the face, the 
 corresponding parts of eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, on the oppo- 
 site sides of the face, appear to be in exact balance, inas- 
 much as the whole is outlined by a framework that is exactly 
 square or rectangular, the external arrangement is satis- 
 factory because it seems representative of something in- 
 ternal that is satisfactory; in other words, because we 
 associate these physical conditions with correlated ones 
 that are mental and moral. Because the face is square, 
 we judge that the character is square. For instance, 
 Mephistopheles as represented on the stage is always 
 painted with the arch of the eyebrows not in line with the 
 horizontal, but beginning high up on the temples and 
 running downward toward the bridge of the nose. This 
 is the way, too, in which even a handsome man looks when 
 contracting his brows under the influence of arrogance, 
 pride, contempt, hatred, and, most of all, of malice. With 
 a similar general effect of irregularity, a simpleton on the 
 stage is painted with nostrils and lips which exaggerate 
 the expression of the smile by running too far up the sides ; 
 and a scold, with the sides of the same features exaggerating 
 the expression of the sneer and frown, by running too far 
 down. Or if we consider combinations which almost 
 every one admires, of a comparatively small ankle and 
 large calf, or of a small wrist and large forearm, or 
 of a small waist and broad shoulders, or, in a woman, 
 broad hips; certainly one way of explaining the effects 
 of combinations of this kind is to attribute them to 
 significance. Clumsy joints at the places where the body 
 must bend suggest a lack of flexibility, deftness, and grace ; 
 and slender muscles at the places where the body must 
 exert itself suggest a lack of stability, strength, and persist- 
 ence. Therefore, though the curve connecting the ankle 
 with the calf, or the wrist with the forearm, or the waist 
 with the breast or hips, is beautiful, as will be shown by- 
 and-by, because it fulfils a requirement connecting together 
 with ease two outlines in vision, it is beautiful also because 
 it fulfils a requirement connecting together with satisfaction 
 two facts in thought. After all that can be claimed, there- 
 fore, for the effects of mere outlines, there remain certain 
 other requisites of beauty for which these never can ac- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 55 
 
 count. They can be attributed to significance alone, under 
 which general term we may include, for reasons given in 
 Chapter XV. of " Art in Theory," all such suggestions as are 
 contained in conceptions like those of adaptability, fitness, 
 association, symbolism, sympathy, and personality. — Pro- 
 portion and Harmony of Line and Color ^ vii. 
 
 BEAUTY, IN BOTH PHYSICAL AND MENTAL EFFECTS. 
 
 There are certain combinations of colors or sounds, say a 
 flag like that of Italy, or a tune Hke the " Austrian National 
 Hymn," the effects of which, in every land, without some- 
 thing to interfere with the normal action of the eye or ear, 
 are recognized to be beautiful. Yet it is possible that, 
 owing to certain associations of ideas, or to certain sugges- 
 tions excited by their effects upon the mind, the indis- 
 putable beauty both of the flag and of the tune may fail to 
 appeal to some. Did the Italian flag seem beautiful at the 
 time of the unification of Italy to the adherents of the Pope? 
 or the Austrian hymn seem so to the Italians when Austria 
 was their oppressor? On the contrary, for exactly opposite 
 reasons, the sound of a Scotch bagpipe or the sight of a 
 Scotch plaid, though neither may fulfil aesthetic laws in its 
 effects upon the physical organs of perception, excite in 
 the Scottish head and heart that which, with his hand on 
 the Bible and fear of eternal punishment in store for per- 
 jury, the Scotchman would be willing to declare an effect 
 of beauty. Yet even he might be willing to admit, too, 
 that certain other things could be more beautiful, — an 
 admission which, logically carried out, would lead to the 
 acknowledgment that complete or ideal beauty is attained 
 only by effects, if there be any, recognized to be beautiful 
 not only by the senses irrespective of the quality of their 
 appeal to the mind, and by the mind irrespective of the 
 quality of their appeal to the senses, but also by both the 
 senses and the mind; in other words, when the effects 
 upon the senses seem to fit those upon the mind in such 
 ways that both together seem to fit the whole duplex na- 
 ture of the man to whom they are addressed. — Art in 
 Theory^ xii. 
 
 In the first place, there are forms made up of complex 
 effects containing every element of beauty, so far as con- 
 cerns their appeal to the eye or ear, and yet which, on 
 account of the character of their appeal to the mind, no 
 
56" AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 delicately organized assthetic, to say nothing of moral, 
 nature could declare to be, in anything like a satisfactory 
 or complete degree, beautiful. Instead of this, their 
 beauty in any degree might be denied. Take a scene of 
 debauchery — a mingling of vice and nakedness — could 
 any amount of faultless music or physique make this 
 seem to a pure mind other than disgusting and revolting? 
 And could the effects of beauty be fully experienced, or 
 consciously experienced at all, in connection with either 
 feeling? Notwithstanding every argument or example of 
 immoral art, there is but one answer to this question. Cer- 
 tainly they could not, and why not? Because the effects 
 which act together harmoniously, so far as concerns their 
 influence upon the ear or eye, are accompanied by other 
 effects produced through the agency of the imagination 
 calling up forms from the realms of recollection, associa- 
 tion, and suggestion; and with these latter effects those 
 from without are discordant. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 Every physiologist admits that the nerves may be 
 affected not only from the sense-side, but also from the 
 mind-side. A man suffers in spirits and health not only 
 because of influence exerted upon his body from without, 
 but also because of influence coming from his own thoughts 
 and emotions. It is a simple physiological fact, therefore, 
 that, even though the nerves may be agreeably affected by 
 a form, nevertheless if, owing to a lack of adaptability or 
 fitness, or to a failure to meet the mind's requirements of 
 association, symbolism, sympathy, or personaHty, certain 
 suggestions of the form jar upon one's sense of congruity or 
 propriety, or, as we say, shock one's sensibilities, then even 
 the physiological condition which is the subjective realiza- 
 tion of the presence of beauty will not ensue. 
 
 The author is aware that to take this ground is to meet 
 with the accusation, on account of the one subject to 
 which the principle is most frequently applied, that he is 
 confounding the assthetical with the ethical. But this 
 is not so. It seems so because the dictates of conscience 
 are more apt to be the same in all men than those of any 
 other part of one's nature, and because, therefore, that 
 which violates these dictates is that which is most likely 
 to appear distasteful to the largest number. But the 
 principle involved applies to a vast range of subjects which 
 have nothing to do with ethics. A picture untrue to the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 57 
 
 requirements of history also, or to the scenes of a locaHty, 
 might have a correspondingly distasteful effect upon the 
 mind of an historian or a traveller; might so jar upon his 
 sensibilities as to counterbalance entirely any possible 
 degree of excellence in form considered merely as form. — 
 Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, vii. 
 
 BEAUTY IN EXPRESSION. 
 
 We sometimes find, as in the pictures of early Christian 
 art, a degree of beauty which cannot be attributed to any 
 fulfilment of the laws of line or color, such as meet the 
 physiological requirements of the eye. Yet often these 
 pictures are acknowledged to possess great charm, owing 
 to what is termed, notwithstanding the implication of 
 some that it does not exist, beauty of expression. What 
 is meant by this? Careful analysis will show that it means 
 that there are evidences in them of a blending of separate 
 and very widely different effects, only a few of which are 
 attributable to form as form. The rest are attributable 
 to traits of character, which certain of the depicted faces 
 and figures are supposed to manifest. But is not every one 
 of these traits of character conjured by the imagination of 
 the spectator and assigned to the forms only so far as they 
 have effects upon recollections of some like form, or upon 
 associations with it, or else as they in some other way sug- 
 gest a significance which can have its origin in no place 
 except his own mind? — Art in Theory, xiii. 
 
 There are forms the inharmonious effects of which upon the 
 senses render them incapable of appearing beautiful, con- 
 sidered merely as forms ; and yet, on account of other accom- 
 panying effects exerted upon the mind, these same forms 
 often manifest, not a little, but a great degree of beauty. 
 Recall, for instance, many a tone expressive of joy, admira- 
 tion, wonder, surprise, as it is uttered upon the stage, not 
 only in dramas that are spoken, but in operas that are 
 sung; and yet such tones, having all the scientific qualities 
 of noise and not of music, have precisely the thrilling and 
 inspiring effects upon thought and emotion that are ascribed 
 to beauty. It is the same with lines. The rigid straightness 
 and sharp irregularity allowed in art because they alone are 
 expressive of passion, either rightly or wrongly impelled, do 
 not in themselves considered, whether used in dramatic 
 representation or in pictures or statues, contain any har- 
 
58 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 monious elements such as must appeal to the eye before 
 a form can produce upon it the physical effect of beauty. 
 So with colors. In connection with certain scenes or figures 
 the effects which the mind attributes to beauty may often 
 be received from forms depicted in hues that to the eye alone 
 appear to be only dingy, mixed, and sometimes positively 
 inharmonious. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 BEAUTY IN FORM. 
 
 To men generally, a fabric of a single hue hanging in a 
 shop-window, two or three of different hues thrown acci- 
 dentally together, and certain figures, even rooms, on 
 account, sometimes of their colors, sometimes of their 
 proportions, sometimes of both, are termed, and properly 
 termed, beautiful. When so used, the word does not refer 
 necessarily to any human thought or feeling that men recog- 
 nize as being suggested through them or by them. All that 
 is meant is, that certain colors and spaces have been so 
 presented as to fulfil requirements of physical laws that 
 make them attractive or agreeable to the sense of sight. 
 Women are not wrong in principle, only in their applica- 
 tion of the effect to a lower sense, when they apply the 
 same word to soups and pies agreeable to taste. — Idem, x. 
 
 BEAUTY IN SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
 Ordinary language recognizes a phase of beauty in mere 
 significance, despite the form. Let one come upon a woman 
 with a deformed figure and homely countenance, dressed 
 in most inharmonious colors, and in a most illy proportioned 
 room; yet if she be engaged in the utterance of some noble 
 sentiment, or in the performance of some sublime act of 
 charity or of self-sacrifice, the expression of the motive in 
 her face and frame, together with her surroundings, may 
 be so accordant with the demands of his soul as to trans- 
 figure the mere forms, and prepare him to swear before a 
 court of justice that he has seen what is beautiful. — Idem, x. 
 
 BEAUTY IN SOUND. 
 
 When is a sound beautiful ? Few would think of answer- 
 ing this except by saying, when it is a blending together, 
 in accordance with the laws of harmony, of several sounds, 
 as in melodies or chords, or series of these, — in other words, 
 when the sound is not simple but complex. But let us be 
 accurate in this matter. Is it not true that a single sound, 
 like the solitary, unvaried note of a bird or of a prima donna, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 59 
 
 is sometimes beautiful? Certainly it is. But when is it 
 beautiful? Of course, when it is musical. But when is it 
 musical? As all physicists know, in the degree in which 
 it is complex; and complex under such conditions that all its 
 component effects work together in ways causing them to 
 fulfil the same laws of harmony that are fulfilled in chords 
 or series of them. . . . For instance, when a string like 
 that of a bass viol is struck, its note, if musical, is not single 
 or simple: it is compound. Suppose that it produces the 
 tone of the bass C — representing a sound-wave caused by 
 the whole length of the string. This C is the main, or, as 
 it is termed, the prime tone that we hear. But, at the same 
 time, this same string usually divides at the middle, pro- 
 ducing what is called a partial tone of the C above the bass, 
 representing a sound-wave caused by one half the string's 
 length. It often produces, too, partial tones of the G above 
 this, of the C above this, and of the E above the last C, 
 representing sound-waves caused, respectively, by one 
 third, one fourth, and one fifth of the string's length. 
 
 — Ideniy XII. 
 
 BEAUTY IN THINGS SEEN. 
 
 When is a line beautiful ? Who, if asked this, would not 
 answer, when it outlines a figure? And when does it out- 
 line a figure? — When it is a combination of many lines of 
 different directions; and, therefore, when its effects are 
 complex. But here again it may be asked, is a single line 
 never beautiful? And again we may answer, "certainly." 
 But, if so, the line is never perfectly straight; it is never 
 a line having the simple effect of only one direction. The 
 line of beauty is a curve; in other words, it has a complex 
 effect. Nor is it really beautiful even then, except when 
 its different sections are conditioned and related so as to 
 produce effects which, for reasons that cannot be given here, 
 are recognized to be harmonious. The same is true of colors 
 also. It is with the harmony or contrast occasioned by the 
 presence of many of these used together that we ordinarily 
 associate the idea of beauty. But yet a single color may be 
 beautiful. At the same time, when this is so, it is owing 
 either to the contrast between it and everything surround- 
 ing it, or else to harmonious effects of light and shade, as they 
 apparently play upon the surfaces of a hue, and also subtly 
 underlie it in those exact subdivisions of the elements of light 
 and of its absence, which determine what it is. — Idem, xii. 
 
6o AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 BEAUTY, ITS APPEAL TO THE SYMPATHIES. 
 
 On the whole, however, this fact that men attribute 
 beauty to that which makes an appeal to the sympathies 
 has not been sufficiently emphasized. Yet nine people 
 out of ten, especially among those not educated in partic- 
 ular schools of art, whose minds therefore act according 
 to first principles rather than according to derived ones, 
 in reading poetry, in looking at pictures, or in entering 
 houses, judge of their beauty precisely as the poet Coleridge 
 said that he did of the inspiration of the Bible — namely, 
 b}'^ the feeling that it found him. In this fact with reference 
 to the influence of art, lies the degree of truth that there is, 
 when not made universally applicable, in the theory of 
 "association." We all take delight in songs and choruses 
 like those of which we have pleasant reminiscences; in 
 passages of poetry that express thoughts or feelings like 
 those to which we have been led by our own experiences; 
 in landscapes like those by which we have been surrounded 
 in hours of pleasure; in figures like those which we have 
 loved or should wish to love could we only find them; in 
 buildings like those which we have possessed or should like 
 to possess as homes. In all these cases, with a possibility 
 of a breadth of applicability in other directions not possible 
 to the theory of association, as held exclusively, the principle 
 of ascribing beauty to the influence of like effects exerted 
 by the forms from without and by those conjured by the 
 imagination within, covers all the facts. But notice, too, 
 that among these like effects, in cases where beauty emanates 
 from a work of art, are included not merely effects traceable 
 to the thought, feelings, will, in short the whole character 
 of the artist, all of which have been manifested by him in 
 his art-form, but also those conjured by the imagination 
 from the thought, feelings, will, in short the whole character, 
 of the one to whom the beauty appeals. — Ideniy xv. 
 
 BEAUTY OCCASIONED FROM WITHOUT AND FROM WITHIN. 
 
 Going back to what was said of the play-impulse or the 
 art-impulse, which is distinctively manifested, as explained 
 there, in an excess of psychical or spiritual life, let us observe 
 more carefully than was then done the sources of the mani- 
 festations of this excess, which, of course, will be the same 
 thing as to trace the sources of beauty; for it is in beauty 
 that the manifestations culminate. Where, then, are the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 6i 
 
 sources of this? Are they wholly in the mind, the soul, 
 the spiritual being of the subject of it ? If so, why does the 
 impulse characteristically express itself, as shown on page 
 73, in imitation? It certainly would not do this were it 
 not under the influence of natural appearances that could 
 be imitated. Yet again, would any number of natural 
 appearances that could be imitated account for the excess 
 of vitality carrying on the imitation ? Must not this vital- 
 ity come from within? It certainly seems so. Yet if it 
 be so indeed, we have clearly indicated effects both from 
 without and from within. — Ideniy xv. 
 
 BEAUTY PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED {see HARMONY). 
 
 [Comments on the cesthetic theory that ''the sense of leauty 
 is an emotional state arising from progressive psycho-physical 
 accommodation to mental objects.'"] In nature, opposing 
 effects, like differently produced waves on a pool, can often 
 be seen to assimilate; and we have a certain interest in 
 watching the result. So w4th the sense of accommodation, 
 the one to the other, and, by consequence, of progressive 
 identity of the different stages of logical processes. But 
 notice that in these it is necessary only that two or more 
 very nearly connected conceptions should assimilate, where- 
 as in beauty — as will be recognized upon recalling the con- 
 ditions underlying rhythm, versification, musical harmony, 
 proportion, collected outlines of columns, arches, windows, 
 roofs, even the tones of a single scale or the colors of a single 
 painting, — it is necessary that whole series and accumula- 
 tions of effects should assimilate; that, so far as possible, 
 everything presented should seem to be the result of putting 
 like effects (not necessarily like forms — see page 153) with 
 like. This requirement of beauty appears to be met by 
 saying that, in it, the amount of assimilation is increased, — 
 that it results in the degree in which the processes to which 
 attention ministers all tend together to give this sense of 
 accommodation. But even this statement seems insuf- 
 ficient. In the degree in which pleasure of any kind what- 
 ever predominates, the consciousness of opposing effects 
 must be subordinated to that of assimilation. Distinctly 
 aesthetic pleasures differ from those afforded by logical 
 connection, or by mere sensational ease or assimilation not 
 only in the relative amount of likeness in them, but also 
 in the relative comprehensiveness of this. There may be 
 
62 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 physical pleasure in which there is little or no complexity 
 and therefore no assimilation between effects from sources 
 essentially different, such, for instance, as those that appeal 
 to the senses and those that appeal to the mind; and the 
 same is true of mental pleasure; and in both forms of 
 pleasure, because of greater narrowness of excitation, there 
 may be more intensity — ^more, that is, which induces to 
 thrill and rapture, tears and laughter — than in esthetic 
 pleasure. A person is more apt to become hilarious when 
 being tickled or when hearing good news from the stock 
 market, than when reading Shakespeare. But the peculi- 
 arity of aesthetic pleasures is that while they lose in intensity 
 they gain, as a rule, in breadth. The latter effect follows 
 not only from the relative amount of likeness in them; but 
 still more from the range and different qualities of the sources 
 of this. In their most complete phases, as has been shown, 
 aesthetic pleasures blend the results of that which is most 
 important in both physical and mental stimulus, widening 
 one's outlook and sympathies especially in the direction — 
 for this is distinctive in them — of enabling imagination to 
 perceive subtle correspondences between things material 
 and spiritual which otherwise might not reveal their essen- 
 tial unity. The fact is, as pointed out on page i6o, that 
 the effects of beauty are satisfactory in the degree in which 
 they are felt to accord with every possible influence exerted 
 at the time when they are experienced. It is not too much 
 to say that so far as they result from vibrations, or in con- 
 nection with vibrations, some of these are beyond the 
 circumference of conscious experience; but all of them, 
 nevertheless, like the minutest and most distant waves 
 upon a pool, moved as in our first illustration, seem at the 
 time to be proportional parts of a universal rhythm. Often, 
 in fact, they seem to be, and possibly, to an extent, they 
 always are, parts of that larger rhythm which, coming down 
 through life and death, winter and summer, waking and 
 sleeping, inhalation and exhalation, pulse-throb and stillness, 
 extend back through the alternating effects of metre and 
 proportion, tone and hue, to others of a nature almost 
 infinitely subtle, but which are just as necessary to the life 
 of the spirit as the beat of the heart to that of the bod}^ 
 To this conception of beauty the idea of sensational ease or 
 assimilation is necessary as an accompanying effect ; but it is 
 a question whether, considered even as a point of departure 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 63 
 
 for development, it is inclusive of all that is in the germ, or 
 of that part of it which most clearly reveals the originating 
 cause. One could not be conscious of the thrills of pleasure 
 connected with doing a deed of disinterested kindness, were 
 it not for unimpeded processes in the circulatory systems of 
 his physical organism. But these do not account for all 
 the effects entering into such an experience or possible to it, 
 even if, as at times in the presence of beauty, it awaken a 
 sense of nothing not distinctly physical. A cause to be 
 satisfying must be capable of accounting for all the facts. 
 Can this be affirmed of the processes that have been men- 
 tioned? Are they not rather effects accompanying others 
 which, in connection with these, are attributable to some- 
 thing deeper in essence and more comprehensive in applica- 
 bility? — Art in Theory, Appendix i. 
 
 BEAUTY RECOGNIZED BY ITS EFFECTS ON THE MIND. 
 
 So far as can be ascertained, the aesthetic quality of a 
 single tone or color, as also the concord caused by the blend- 
 ing of it with others, is recognized to be what it is by the 
 physical senses irrespective of the conscious action of the 
 mind. Only the analysis of science has been able to detect 
 the way in which, in such cases, the effects are made to 
 harmonize. But can the same be affirmed of all the effects 
 of beauty ? Can it even be affirmed of all of them that are 
 indisputably connected with form as form? How is it with 
 the beauty of effects undoubtedly imparted through rhythm 
 and proportion? These, certainly, though apprehended 
 through the physical senses, are recognized only in connection 
 with the conscious action of the mind. It is because we 
 can consciously count the beats and accents in music and 
 poetry, as well as compute the distances between straight 
 lines and curves in painting and architecture, that we detect 
 those results in them of exact measurements in time or 
 space which make them what they are. But if it be true 
 that certain characteristics of art which are determined only 
 by form demand action on the part both of the senses 
 irrespective of the mind and of the mind also, how much 
 more true must this appear when we consider that in all 
 cases, as shown in Chapter VI., this form is, in some sense 
 at least, a form of expression; and therefore a form of some- 
 thing that in any circumstances must, in some way, appeal 
 to the mind. — Art in Theory, xii. 
 
64 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 The very complexity and unity that have been shown to 
 be essential to beauty of form can be recognized by only 
 the exercise of distinctively mental analysis. Indeed, the 
 range of the appreciation of beauty is invariably limited by 
 the abiUty of the mind to make this analysis. If musical 
 tones be made to follow one another too rapidly for the mind 
 to distinguish the differences between them, the result is 
 not rhythm or melody, but noise; or if a round disk with 
 harmonious colors near its rim be made to revolve too 
 rapidly for the mind to distinguish them, the whole produces 
 only the effect of a mixed color usually of a dingy and 
 thoroughly non-beautiful white. A similar result is pro- 
 duced in poetry by metaphors or similes, the different 
 effects of which are so complicated as to appear mixed, as 
 well as by hues, outlines, or carvings of a similarly confused 
 nature in pictures, statues, or buildings. 
 
 — The Essentials oj /Esthetics y il. 
 
 Now the question comes. Are all the effects entering 
 harmoniously into that complex result which constitutes 
 beauty traceable to such as influence merely the physical 
 organs of the ear or eye? In answer to this it may be 
 stated, first, that it has been discovered that not only do 
 the nerves of the ear and eye vibrate as affected by sound 
 and sight, and communicate to the brain intelligence of 
 particular degrees of pitch and hue as determined by the 
 rates and sizes of the vibratory waves, but that in addi- 
 tion to these the nerves, as well, that constitute the sub- 
 stance of the brain vibrate and thus give rise to thoughts 
 and feelings; and, not only so, but that the vibrations of 
 the nerves in particular parts of the brain give rise to 
 thoughts and feelings of a particular character; such, for 
 instance, as those connected with particular exercises of 
 memory in recalling general events or specific terms. 
 These facts have been ascertained through various ob- 
 servations and experiments in connection with the loss or 
 removal of certain parts of the brains of men or of animals, 
 or with the application of electricity to certain systems of 
 nerves accidentally or artificially exposed or else naturally 
 accessible. Of course, such discoveries tend to the infer- 
 ence that all conscious mental experience^ whatsoever, 
 precisely as in the case of sensations excited in the organs 
 of the ear and eye, are effects of vibrations produced in 
 the nerves of the brain. If this inference be justified, 
 
Kaffir Station, Africa 
 See pages lo, ii, 38, 73, 81-85, 88, 147, 148, 162, 208, 227, 326 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 65 
 
 the line of thought that we have been pursuing apparently 
 justifies the additional inference that all conscious mental 
 experiences of the beautiful are effects of harmonious 
 vibrations produced in the nerves of the brain. — Ideniy 11. 
 
 BEAUTY THE EMBODIMENT OF CREATIVE THOUGHT. 
 
 The aspiration and the aim of art 
 That will not bide contented till the law I 
 Of thought shall supersede the law of things, 
 And that which in the midnight of this world 
 Is but a dream shall be fulfilled in days 
 Where there is no more matter, only mind, 
 And beauty, born of free imagination. 
 Shall wait but on the sovereignty of spirit. 
 — West Mountain, from *' The Mountains about Williams- 
 town.'' 
 
 BEAUTY WHEN COMPLETE. 
 
 It does not seem to be true, therefore, that beauty can 
 be referred merely to form, or merely to significance, or 
 merely to both together. To cover all the facts indicated 
 by, at least, the ordinary use of the term, we must acknowl- 
 edge that all these theories contain some truth; and, at the 
 same time, that beauty is complete alone in the degree in 
 which beauty of form and of significance are combined. 
 
 — Art in Theory, x. 
 
 BRILLIANT WRITTEN STYLES, BRIGHT AND CLEAR. 
 
 This is a method of writing not uncommon in our day, 
 and it is called brilliant. But no style is really brilliant the 
 figures and ideas of which do not stand out in bright light 
 and clear relief; and few writers of the first class, not- 
 withstanding the example of Carlyle, and, to some extent, 
 of Emerson, obscure their thought by an endeavor to render 
 it poetically representative. We have found how true this 
 is as applied to the poetry of the best writers; it is equally 
 true as applied to their prose. The fact is that a man who 
 knows best what poetry is, knows best what poetry is not; 
 and when he tries to write prose he gives men the benefit 
 of his knowledge. Nothing, indeed, can be more simple 
 and direct than the prose of Shakespeare, Coleridge, Goethe, 
 Wordsworth, and Byron. A man judging from it might sup- 
 pose that these writers, as compared with men like Professor 
 Wilson, Hartley Coleridge, and Carlyle, had but little rep- 
 resentative ability. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xxv. 
 
66 AN ART^PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 CHARACTER (see mention of it under architecture, per- 
 sonality, REPRESENTATION, and REPRESENTATIVE). 
 CLASSIC VS. ROMANTIC. 
 
 Centuries ago, people who spoke one of the two languages, 
 Greek or Latin, the degrees of proficiency in which even in 
 our own colleges indicate the class to which a student belongs, 
 and which everywhere since the revival of learning have 
 been termed, because the literature composed in them is 
 supposed to belong to the highest class, the classic languages, 
 — these people produced certain works of art, noticeably in 
 poetry, sculpture, and architecture, that are still considered 
 to equal, if not to excel, anything produced in modern 
 times. For almost a thousand years, during the Middle 
 Ages, this art was scarcely known, little appreciated, and 
 seldom imitated. In the meantime, however, an artistic 
 development manifested itself among the different Roman- 
 esque or Romantic nations, as they are termed, i. e., na- 
 tions both Latin and Gothic, formed from the fragments of 
 the former Roman Empire. In architecture this develop- 
 ment culminated in the style termed Gothic. In sculpture, 
 years before the revival of learning, it produced statues and 
 busts like those in Wells and Lincoln cathedrals, which in 
 form are wellnigh perfect. In music and poetry it brought 
 forth the songs of the troubadours and the minnesingers, and 
 also the early rhyming chronicles and ballads. It gave rise, 
 too, to the ''mystery plays" and the "moralities, " and was 
 the mainspring of the English drama. 
 
 About the fifteenth century, however, owing partly to 
 the wars in the Orient and the attendant renewal of com- 
 mercial intercourse with the East, partly to the fall of 
 Constantinople and the consequent dispersion of Greek 
 scholars through Europe, and partly to that general revival 
 of interest in intellectual pursuits that soon afterward led 
 to the Reformation, the older classic languages and art 
 began to attract attention. The matured results, as they 
 were, of a matured civilization, they could not but have a 
 moulding influence upon the theory and practice of Western 
 art with which they were now brought into contact. 
 
 Whatever increases intelligence tends to increase intel- 
 lectual power, and the influence of schoolmen learned in 
 the classics was at first only beneficial. Nearly all modern 
 literature in every country of Europe dates from the Ren- 
 aissance. Painting and sculptiure attained, at that time, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 67 
 
 an almost unprecedented degree of excellence ; and the style 
 of building originated by Brunelleschi, Bramante, and 
 Alberti in Italy was based upon principles that still underlie 
 the most successful street architecture for large cities, and 
 which, artistically developed, might have led then, and 
 might still lead, to results equalling anything termed Grecian 
 or Gothic. 
 
 But increased intelligence tends to increase not only 
 intellectual activity but also pedantry. The artistic ex- 
 pression of pedantry is imitation. As soon as that which 
 was classic became fashionable, artists began to forget to 
 embody their thoughts and feelings in what they produced. 
 They paid attention to forms alone; even then to forms 
 as they could be found, not in nature, but in celebrated 
 works of art. With these for their models, and being 
 artisans rather than artists, they attained the highest 
 object of their ambition in the degree in which they attained 
 success in copying. Their copying, moreover, necessarily 
 extended, after a little, beyond the forms to the ideas ex- 
 pressed in them. The subjects of art came to be not modern 
 nor even Christian, but ancient and mythologic. For 
 these reasons, the production of something that imitates 
 a previously existing form or subject is now one of the 
 recognized meanings of the term classic. When the word 
 was used first, Greece and Rome supplied the only classic 
 products. Now any works of any nation are so called as 
 soon as they have become admired sufficiently to be used 
 as models. . . . 
 
 The classic tendency being that which inclines the artist 
 to imitate forms and subjects of the past, the romantic has 
 come to mean just the opposite, — namely, that which allows 
 the form to be determined solely by the exigencies of expres- 
 sion and the expression solely by the exigencies of the period. 
 In fact, it is hardly right to say that this latter tendency has 
 come to mean this, — it has always meant this. The 
 mediaeval pictures were poorly drawn. Their forms, as 
 forms, were exceedingly defective. Yet they were fully 
 successful in expressing exactly the religious ideas of the 
 time. Similar conditions underlay also, as first developed, 
 mediaeval music, poetry, and sculpture. 
 
 This being so, it is evident that romanticism, if mani- 
 fested to the total exclusion of classicism, cannot lead to 
 the best results. The same fact is still more evident when 
 
68 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 we consider that the forms and themes of all art of the 
 highest character, whenever and wherever it appears, are 
 developed upon lines of previously developed excellence; 
 and that to model after others, even in a slight degree, is 
 to manifest something of the classic tendency. — Art in 
 Theory, iii. 
 
 "The Independent" first refers to the "astounding mis- 
 apprehension" of this view, and then goes on to say, — 
 "We cannot at all admit that . . . 'the production of 
 something that imitates a previously existing form or 
 subject is now one of the recognized meanings of the term 
 classic.'" Why can he not admit this? Can it be that 
 he is unaware that, at the present day, which is what 
 is meant by the word now, men, when they speak of a 
 modern artist as producing a classic face, or temple, or 
 drama, or allusion in a drama, invariably suggest a like- 
 ness in it either to a Greek face, or temple, or drama, or 
 allusion containing Greek mythological references? or 
 else, if not, at least a likeness to some form which, as a form, 
 is sufficiently old to have a recognized character? And 
 does he not know that the reason for this suggestion is 
 that "one of the recognized meanings" — not the only 
 meaning mentioned in "Art in Theory, " but one mentioned 
 in its historic connections — "of the term classic is the pro- 
 duction of something that imitates a previously existing 
 form or subject"? One would think that everybody ought 
 to know this. "Les classiques," says a French criticism 
 lying before me now, "les classiques c'est-a-dire ceux qui 
 perpetuent une manihre. " But this reviewer does not know 
 it. However, he probably fancies himself in good company 
 — ^for America. An earlier critic in "The Nation, " quoting 
 from "Art in Theory" the statement that "the germ of 
 classicism is the conception that art should chiefly emphasize 
 the form," and of romanticism that "the ideas expressed 
 in the form should be chiefly emphasized," had exclaimed: 
 " Sound not sense was certainly never a motto of classical 
 literature." And who had said that it was? Does the 
 carefully worded phrase "chiefly emphasize" mean "exclu- 
 sively emphasize"? Or does the term "sound" include all 
 that is meant by "form"? When we speak of dramatic 
 "form" do we often even suggest the idea of "sound"? 
 What we mean then is the general method of unfolding 
 the plot as a whole. This attempted refutation reveals, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 69 
 
 once more, that lack of philosophic discrimination to which 
 reference has been made. But connected with it, there is a 
 still greater lack of historic knowledge. Who has never 
 heard of the famous theatrical contest between the classi- 
 cists and romanticists in Paris, which once almost made a 
 Bedlam of the whole city, because Victor Hugo, the idol 
 of romanticism, did not model his dramas upon those of 
 his predecessors, which, in turn, were modelled upon those 
 of the Greeks? What was Hugo contending for? For the 
 right to emphasize chiefly the ideas behind the form — to 
 speak out naturally upon a modern subject, with a style to 
 fit it, whether it assumed a conventional form, or one that 
 nobody before had ever attempted. But no, says one of 
 these critics: ** Classicism and Romanticism are tempers 
 of mind." ''They owe their origin," says the other, **to 
 a difference in mental constitutions. " Of course, there is a 
 truth in this. By nature men are inclined toward the 
 one or the other. But one might say the same of almost 
 any different phases of mental action. He might say it 
 of the tendencies to intemperance or gambling. But 
 would his saying this explain what either of these is? 
 Certainly not; for only when the tendencies come to the 
 surface and reveal themselves in a form of action, do they 
 exist in such a way that they can be differentiated. The 
 same is true of classicism and romanticism. They cannot 
 be differentiated till developed into a form of expression. 
 The questions before us are, what is this form, and what is 
 there in it, as a form, that makes it what it is? To speak 
 of differences in ** tempers of mind" or of ''mental constitu- 
 tion, " is to mention something influential in causing a 
 difference to be. But it is no more influential than is the 
 spirit of the age, or the conditions of taste, or environment, 
 or education; and it fails to suggest, as even some of these 
 latter do, why it is that, in certain periods, all authors and 
 artists incline to classicism, and in other periods all of them 
 incline to romanticism; while, now and then, the same 
 man seems almost equally inclined to both. Goethe's 
 *' Leiden des jungen Werther's," for instance, and his 
 **Goetz von Berlichingen " are specimens of distinctively 
 romantic literature; whereas his "Iphigenie auf Tauris" 
 is, perhaps, the most successful modem example of classic 
 literature. At what period between writing the first two 
 and the latter of these was his "temper of mind," his 
 
70 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 "mental constitution" changed? Is it not a little more 
 rational to say that what was changed was his artistic 
 method? — possibly, his theory of this? — that in the first 
 two he "chiefly emphasized" the "significance," and in 
 the last, "the form," causing it to be — what he did not 
 take pains to cause the others to be — "something imitating 
 a previously existing" Greek "form" not only, but, in this 
 case, a Greek "subject" also? 
 
 On the contrary, says one of these critics, elaborating his 
 theory about "tempers of mind, " "classicism is reasonable, 
 logical, and constructive, while romanticism is emotional 
 and sensuous"; and the other echoes his sentiments with 
 something about "the eternal distinction between the intel- 
 lectual and the emotional." And so one is to believe that 
 the distinguishing feature of classic Greek sculpture — like 
 a " Venus, " a "Faun, " or a "Group of the Niobe, " — or of a 
 classic Greek drama, like the "Antigone," is, that it is not 
 sensuous or emotional; and that the distinguishing feature 
 of the plays of Shakespeare or Hugo, or of a Gothic cathe- 
 dral, is that they are not reasonable or logical or construc- 
 tive ! Of course, there is a cause underlying the distinctions 
 that these critics are trying to make. It is suggested too 
 in "Art in Theory." On page 25, the statement is made 
 that one characteristic of romantic art is that in it the 
 form is "determined solely by the exigencies of expres- 
 sion," and on page 17, at the beginning of the chapter in 
 which this statement occurs, as well as in scores of other 
 places in the book, it is explained that by the term expression 
 is meant a communication of thought and feeling combined. 
 Without any explanation indeed, this meaning would be a 
 necessary inference from the fundamental conception of the 
 book, which is that all art is emotional in its sources, and 
 that art-ideas are the manifestations of emotion in con- 
 sciousness (Chapters V., XVIII., and XIX.). It follows 
 from all these facts together that emotion — but not without 
 its accompanying thought, which, sometimes, as with 
 Browning, throws the emotion entirely into the shade — has 
 a more unrestricted expression in romantic art than in classic 
 art. In the latter the form is "chiefly emphasized," and 
 therefore there is a more conscious, as well as apparent 
 exercise of rational intelligence engaged in constructing a 
 form for it, and in confining the expression to the limits of 
 this form. But we must not confound the effects of this 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 71 
 
 difference with that which causes them. This is the method 
 of the artist when producing his art-work, a method influ- 
 enced by the relative attention which he gives, either con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, to the requirements of significance 
 or of form. It is important to recognize this fact, too, 
 because, otherwise, we should not recognize that he is the 
 master of his methods, and, if he choose, can produce in 
 both styles, though, of course, not with equal pleasure, 
 because he must have his preferences; nor with equal 
 facility, because it is a matter of a lifetime to produce suc- 
 cessfully in either. To suppose that his methods master 
 him, is to show a lack of insight, with reference to the prac- 
 tice of art, still greater than that just indicated with 
 reference to the theory of it. Goethe could write * * Iphigenie 
 auf Tauris" or the ** Leiden des jungen Werther's." So, 
 too, the same painter can "chiefly emphasize" form in his 
 figures by using the distinct "classic" line, as it is termed; 
 or, if he have been educated in another school, often merely 
 if he choose, he can suggest the form with the vague outlines 
 of the romantic impressionists; and the same architect also 
 can plan a classic Girard college, or a romantic seaside 
 cottage. To imagine otherwise, is to parallel the notion of 
 a schoolboy that the poet tears his hair, rolls his eyes, raves 
 in the lines of a lyric rather than of a drama, and makes a 
 general fool of himself by a complete lack of self-control 
 whenever he is composing at all, simply because he is "bom 
 and not made." 
 
 That this inference with reference to the error as to 
 artistic methods is justified, is proved by the inability of 
 critics of this class to recognize the necessity of making 
 any distinction whatever between significance in form — not 
 outside of form — and form as developed for its own sake, 
 concerning which the reader may notice what is said in the 
 Introduction to "Music as a Representative Art." — 
 Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, Preface. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION, AS THE SOURCE OF ART-COMPOSITION. 
 
 Men generally — and possibly we may find the same true 
 of artists — before they can master the materials about them, 
 must do what is expressed in the old saying, "Classify and 
 conquer. " When the child first observes the world, every- 
 thing is a maze; but, anon, out of this maze, objects 
 emerge which he contrasts with other objects and distin- 
 
72 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 guishes from them. After a little, he sees that two or three 
 of these ot:)jects, thus distinguished, are alike; and pursuing 
 a process of comparison he is able, by himself or with the 
 help of others, to unite and to classify them, and to give to 
 each class a name. . . . All his knowledge, and not only 
 this, but his understanding and application of the laws of 
 botany, mineralogy, psychology, or theology will depend on 
 the degree in which he learns to separate from others, and 
 thus to unite and classify and name certain plants, rocks, 
 mental activities, or religious dogmas. Why should not the 
 same principle apply in the arts? It undoubtedly does. 
 . . . The factors classified and the results attained in 
 science, philosophy, and art are different; but in essential 
 regards, the method is the same. It is so because it is the 
 same human mind that applies it. — The Genesis of Art- 
 Form, I. 
 
 Just as the physicist classifies effects conditioned upon 
 laws operating underneath phenomena of a physical nature, 
 and the psychologist classifies effects conditioned upon laws 
 operating underneath phenomena of a psychical nature, so 
 the artist classifies effects conditioned upon laws operating 
 underneath phenomena of an artistic nature. . . . 
 
 So far as classification results from the conditions of mind, 
 its function is to simplify the work of forming concepts, 
 and its end is attained in the degree in which it enables 
 one to conceive of many different things — birds or beasts, 
 larks or geese, dogs or sheep, as the case may be — as one. 
 Classification is, therefore, an effort in the direction of unity. 
 It is hardly necessary to add that the same is true of art- 
 composition. Its object is to unite many different features 
 in a single form. Unity being the aim of classification, it 
 is evident that the most natural way of attaining this aim 
 is that of putting, so far as possible, like with like; and that 
 doing this necessitates a process of comparison. Applying 
 this principle to art-composition, and looking, first, at music, 
 we find that the chief characteristic of its form is a series of 
 phrases of like lengths, divided into like numbers of meas- 
 ures, all sounded in like time, through the use of notes that 
 move upward or downward in the scale at like intervals, 
 with like recurrences of melody and harmony. So with 
 poetry. The chief characteristics of its form are lines of 
 like lengths, divided into like numbers of feet, each uttered 
 in like time, to which are sometimes added alliteration, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 73 
 
 assonance, and rhyme, produced by the recurrence of like 
 sounds in either consonants, vowels, or both. In painting, 
 sculpture, and architecture, no matter of what "style," 
 the same is true. The most superficial inspection of any 
 product of these arts, if it be of established reputation, will 
 convince one that it is composed in the main by putting 
 together forms that are alike in such things as color, shape, 
 size, posture, and proportion. . . . 
 
 But classification is traceable not only to the conditions 
 of mind but also of nature. It is in the latter that the mind 
 is confronted by that which classification is intended to 
 overcome, by that which is the opposite of unity — namely, 
 variety. If there were none of this in nature, all things 
 would appear to be alike, and classification would be un- 
 necessary. As a fact, however, no two things are alike 
 in all regards; and the mind must content itself with putting 
 together those that are alike in some regards. This is the 
 same as to say that classification involves, occasionally, 
 putting the like with the unlike and necessitates contrast as 
 well as comparison. ... A similar fact is observable 
 in products of art. One of the most charming effects in 
 music and poetry is that produced when more or less unlike- 
 ness is blended with the likeness in rhythm, tone, and move- 
 ment which, a moment ago, was said to constitute the chief 
 element of artistic form. In painting and sculpture one of 
 the most invariable characteristics of that which is inartistic 
 is a lack of sufficient diversity, colors too similar, outlines 
 too uniform. So, too, with architecture. Notice the 
 conventional fronts of the buildings on many of the streets 
 of our cities. Their accumulations of doors and windows 
 and cornices, all of like sizes and shapes, are certainly not 
 in the highest sense interesting. When we have seen a few 
 of them, we have seen all of them. In order to continue to 
 attract our attention, forms must, now and then, present 
 features that have not been seen before. In "The Genesis 
 of Art-Form" (see the chart on page 89 of this volume), 
 the suggestions derived from a line of thought similar to 
 that just pursued, are developed into various methods used 
 in art-composition. — Essentials 0} Esthetics, xiv. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION, NECESSITATED BY IMITATION. 
 
 At first thought, classification, and anything resembling 
 imitation appear to necessitate different processes. But, 
 
74 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 possibly, they do not. Suppose that the forms of nature 
 themselves were found to manifest effects like those of 
 classification? In that case, to imitate them would involve 
 imitating this ; and to add to them, as is usually done in art, 
 and to add to them in such a way as to make the added fea- 
 tures seem analogous to the imitated ones, and thus to cause 
 the forms as wholes to continue to seem natural, would in- 
 volve continuing the process of classification. Now, if, with 
 this thought in mind, we recall the appearances of nature, we 
 shall recognize that the condition, which has been supposed 
 to exist there, really does exist. A man, when classifying 
 rocks, puts together mentally those that are alike. So does 
 nature, grouping them in the same mountain ranges, or at the 
 bottoms of the same streams. He puts together leaves, and 
 feathers, and hairs that are aHke. So does nature, making 
 them grow on the same trees, or birds, or animals. He puts 
 together human beings that are alike. So does nature, 
 giving birth to them in the same families, races, climates, 
 countries. In fact, a man's mind is a part of nature; and 
 when it works naturally, it works as nature does. He 
 combines elements as a result of classification, in accordance 
 with methods analogous to those in which nature, or, "the 
 mind in nature, " combines them. Indeed, he would never 
 have thought of classification at all, unless in nature itself 
 he had first perceived the beginning of it. He would never 
 have conceived of forming a group of animals and calling 
 them horses, nor have been able to conceive of this unless 
 nature had first made horses alike. To put together the 
 factors of an art-product, therefore, in accordance with the 
 methods of classification, does not involve any process 
 inconsistent with representing accurately the forms that 
 appear in the world. These forms themselves are made up 
 of factors apparently put together in the same way, though 
 not to the same extent. — The Genesis of Art- Form, i. 
 
 COLOR {see harmony of color, decorative vs. pictorial, 
 and representative effects of color). 
 
 color, as perceived by the eye. 
 Where {i, e., through the bacillar layer) the optic nerve 
 enters the retina, the eye is blind. This seems to prove 
 that the bacillary layer is necessary to sight. But this layer 
 contains the rods and cones. These are said in Foster's 
 ** Physiology " to be transparent, refractive, doubly refrac- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 75 
 
 tive, and very sensitive to light, changing in size in different 
 degrees of it. Possibly they may act in some way analo- 
 gously to prisms. But however they may act, Fig. 131 
 shows that the rods because smaller should be more sensitive 
 to slight vibratory effects than the cones; and Fig. 128 
 shows that the central spot, which sees outlines and colors 
 the most distinctly, contains only cones. Are the rods, 
 therefore, affected, according to what was said on page 379, 
 by light in general, and the cones by local color in particular 
 objects ? Again, each rod and cone possesses two apparently 
 separated limbs, the larger of which is nearer the main body 
 of the nerves than the smaller. If a wave of white light 
 affect each limb similarly, this wave divided and changed in 
 form, as when color is produced, must affect each differently. 
 In this case is one cone-limb affected by the principal color- 
 wave, and the smaller, with reflecting rods near it, by the 
 twin complementary color- wave? All around the rods and 
 cones, and inside the former, a purplish-blue liquid is con- 
 stantly advancing and receding. It has been supposed that 
 the sole purpose of this is to record different degrees of light 
 and shade. But, while recording these, it may do very 
 much more. Most of us must have noticed, when the 
 power is turned from an electric light, that the one platinum 
 wire vibrating at different rates produces all the warm colors 
 — white-yellow, yellow, orange, and red; and it is a fact 
 easily shown that these colors respectively, when shining 
 through blue glass, produce all the cold colors, — blue, green 
 olive-green, and purple. The attributing of articulative 
 sounds to different rates and forms of vibrations when affect- 
 ing the same ossicles in the ear suggested to Professor Bell 
 that apparatus for converting the vibrations in an electric 
 wire into sounds which made the telephone a'success. Why 
 is it not reasonable to suppose that the same rods or cones, 
 when vibrating differently, shaded or not by blue, can 
 produce all the colors, so that the mind can see them as well 
 as the outlines in the picture impressed upon the retina. 
 Another thought: vibrations of particles of matter against 
 one another or the air usually generate heat. Heat thus 
 generated usually generates chemical action . Different rates 
 of vibration — and this is why, as has been proved, it is true 
 of different colors — generate different degrees of heat and of 
 chemical action. Chemical action, so scientists tell us, 
 manifested in the pulling down and building up of tissue, 
 
76 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 is the method through which the nerves communicate 
 sensations. What then? The author is aware that he has 
 suggested an explanation of the way in which sound-waves 
 or sight-waves may affect the organs of the ear or eye, and 
 through them the nerves and the mind back of them, which 
 is not in the books. But can any explanation be found in 
 them as plausible, or as free from objections, as is this one? 
 Certainly it is not any explanation ascribing the recognition 
 of any pitch or color to a separate organ fitted to respond 
 sympathetically to it and to it alone. So far, at least, as 
 concerns the organism, as represented in Figs. 130 and 131, 
 there is no reason to suppose otherwise than that all the rods 
 and cones may be equally fitted to respond to the waves of 
 light of any color, and yet with different degrees of sus- 
 ceptibility, some — possibly the rods — ^representing only at- 
 mospheric light and color, and some — possibly the cones — 
 that color which appears in particular objects. 
 
 The explanation thus suggested not only refers to a 
 similar cause the subjective effects both in the ear and the 
 eye . . . but it seems to explain also the most important 
 difference between the effects of successive' and of simultan- 
 eous ^ contrast. This is that the time of the continuance and 
 the brilliancy of a color in successive contrast depend upon 
 the length and strength of the vibratory condition preceding 
 it, whereas, in simultaneous contrast, such effects depend 
 neither upon the length of time during which one looks at a 
 color, nor even upon its comparative fulness. This differ- 
 ence is exactly what, according to our hypothesis, we should 
 expect. According to it, the continuance and character 
 of the oscillations occasioning successive contrast will, of 
 course, be determined by the quantity and quality of their 
 previous excitation. On the contrary, the complementary 
 color produced in simultaneous contrast depends upon the 
 presence by its side of the local color, and it is neither in- 
 creased nor lessened in intensity by its continued presence. 
 Moreover, in every place where this complementary hue can 
 become visible, there is already some other shade or tint with 
 which its hue must blend, and . . . produce a mixed, and 
 therefore never, save in very exceptional cases, a brilliant 
 effect. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color ^ xxii. 
 
 * Color contrasting with that of an object removed from sight. 
 ' Color contrasting with that of an object which it surrounds. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 77 
 
 COLOR AS PRODUCED BY HAVING HUES MIX IN THE EYE. 
 
 Within the last half -century, the art of painting . . . has 
 been almost revolutionized; and here again we have to at- 
 tribute the result to a change in the method of producing 
 effects in color. The older painters, as a rule, mixed their 
 hues before placing them on the canvas, and put them there 
 exactly as they wished to have them appear when seen 
 from a distance. But, according to the most modern 
 method (suggested first by Velasquez), colors, so far as 
 feasible, are brought into proximity on the canvas in such 
 ways that, although not mixed there, they shall, when seen 
 from a distance, mix in the eye. This is the way in which 
 the color effects of nature are usually produced; and, as 
 applied in many cases renders the art-product much more 
 satisfactory, suggesting that the elements entering into a 
 scene, like those of leaves and grasses, are separated from 
 one another, and thus conveying impressions of trans- 
 parency and atmosphere which were impossible according 
 to the older method. The general effect . . . with the 
 attendant impressions of transparency . . . and of in- 
 finity of gradations seems to be accepted as a crucial test of 
 excellence in modern painting. 
 
 It is safe to say that the Fontainebleau-Barbizon and the 
 Spanish Roman schools, which have been chiefly instru- 
 mental in introducing these new methods, have changed 
 the whole character of much of the contemporary art in 
 other countries, and of about all of the best painting in 
 our own. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color ^ xvii. 
 
 COLOR, IN PAINTING VS. DECORATION. 
 
 There are two methods of using color, one having to do 
 with imitating it so as to represent it as we find it in certain 
 agreeable or beautiful appearances of nature; the other 
 with applying or arranging it, irrespective of anything but 
 the general principles in accordance with which it appears 
 to be agreeable or beautiful. As painting gives us pictures 
 of the forms of nature, and architecture does not, it is 
 natural to suppose that the first of these methods is, or 
 shotild be, used mainly in the former art, and the second 
 mainly in the latter, i. c, in the decoration of the interiors or 
 exteriors of buildings. This natural supposition it would 
 be well if some of our modern painters would ponder. 
 When they imagine that they can use color merely "for its 
 
78 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 own sake" they are on ground almost, though not quite, 
 as dangerous — owing to the far more subtle requirements of 
 color when used in any circumstances whatever — as are 
 poets who imagine that they can use rhyme, or any other 
 element of sound, merely ''for its own sake. " The primary 
 object of both painting and poetry is to represent certain 
 effects that are, or that may be supposed to be, in nature ; 
 and the moment that this primary object is forgotten the 
 artist or author has crossed the boundaries of his own 
 art, and must compete with the decorators or musicians, 
 in circumstances where imitative limitations by which 
 they are not hampered will materially interfere with his 
 success. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xvii. 
 
 Just as arrangements of sound in verse are satisfactory in 
 the degree in which they fulfil such laws of harmony as 
 apply to music, so arrangements of colors in pictures are 
 satisfactory in the degree in which they fulfil such laws of 
 harmony as apply to decoration. Although the painter of 
 pictures does not use color merely for its own sake, he ought 
 nevertheless to use it in such a way as to cause it, for its own 
 sake, to be a source of interest and pleasure. — IdeiUy xxiii. 
 
 In music, it is absolutely essential that all the tones 
 sounded simultaneously as in chords, or in immediate 
 succession, should fulfil certain physical and physiological 
 requirements. If they do not, all the other art-methods, 
 however scrupulously applied, cannot secure harmony. 
 That the same is true with reference to the colors used side 
 by side or one after another in the order of space is a fact 
 which, even if not confirmed by our own observation, the 
 investigations of science have placed beyond dispute. — 
 Identy XXII. 
 
 COLOR-PERCEPTION INFLUENCED BY CULTIVATION. 
 
 A spectrum, which, when thrown upon green pigment, 
 shows only a green color, if thrown upon the green of foliage 
 shows tints both of red and yellow. Or if the trees be 
 examined through a red glass, it has been observed that in 
 the degree in which the glass transmits only the red rays the 
 leaves are red, although the blue sky above them, as also 
 green fabrics and pigments about them, appear black. The 
 conclusion is inevitable that the coloring matter of foliage, 
 which is called chlorophyl, contains, besides green, other and 
 warmer colors. Of course, for one who knows this, the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 79 
 
 suggestion of the tints of red and yellow, in the green about 
 him, will greatly augment his interest in natural scenery. 
 Nor does it require more than a slight degree of effort to 
 enable him actually to perceive these. In coloring, as in 
 everything, men come to see what they try to see. What 
 but persistence in scrutinizing and criticising their neigh- 
 bors' attire makes the color-sense in women so much 
 stronger than in men? As shown in Chapters XII. to 
 XIV. of ** Art in Theory, " beauty, even as recognized by the 
 senses, depends largely upon effects produced upon the mind. 
 The truth underlying such injunctions as "Seek ye first 
 the kingdom, " "The kingdom is within you," and "Except 
 a man be born from above he cannot see the kingdom," is 
 of universal applicability. Those who strive to enter into 
 the realm of coloring will find capabilities within themselves 
 which, if properly used, will introduce into their field of 
 vision an infinite variety of tints and shades which, so far 
 as concerns the effect upon the senses, transcend in beauty 
 those which the ordinary man perceives, in a degree akin 
 to that in which the new earth pictured in the Apocalypse 
 transcends the old earth of ordinary experience. It is only 
 the man, too, who is able to perceive these colors in nattire, 
 by whom they can be fully recognized as representing truth 
 when they are placed upon the canvas of the painter. Yet 
 here they are essential. That indescribable effect of vitality 
 which characterizes the grasses and grains of some land- 
 scapes is owing largely to the presence in them of these red 
 and yellow tints. It is these that make of the dead green a 
 "living green," just as surely as the same tints, were they 
 used, would give to the pictiu*e of a corpse the glow and 
 warmth of life. — Idem, xviii. 
 
 COMPARISON AND ASSOCIATION IN ART-COMPOSITION {see also 
 ASSOCIATION, and IMAGINATION AND COMPARISON). 
 
 Certain audible or visible effects traceable to material or 
 to human nature have, either by way of comparison, as in 
 imitation, or of association, as in conventional usage, a recog- 
 nized meaning. This meaning enables the mind to employ 
 them in representing its conceptions. But what has been 
 said applies to the use of these effects so far only as they 
 exist in the condition in which they manifest themselves in 
 nature. Art-composition involves an elaboration and often 
 an extensive combination of them. How can they be 
 
8o AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 elaborated and combined in such a way as to cause them to 
 continue to represent the same conceptions that they repre- 
 sented before art had begun its work upon them? Evi- 
 dently this result can be attained in the degree alone in 
 which all that is added to the natural sound or sight 
 representing the original conception continues to repeat 
 the same representative effect. In other words, the im- 
 agination, which, by way of comparison or of associa- 
 tion, connected together the original mental conception 
 and the form representing it, must continue, in the same 
 way to connect together this form and all the forms added 
 to it by way of elaboration or combination. Other methods 
 of expression — ^religious or scientific — may use imagina- 
 tion in only its initial work of formulating words or other 
 symbols, but art must use it to the very end. It mat- 
 ters not whether its first conception be an image of a 
 whole, as of an entire poem or palace, or whether it be an 
 image of a part, as of a certain form of metre or of arch, 
 the imagination, in dividing the image of the whole into 
 parts, or in building up the whole from its parts, must always, 
 in successful art, continue to carry on its work by way of 
 comparison or association. — Essentials of Esthetics, xiv. 
 
 COMPARISON APPLICABLE TO MENTAL CONCEPTIONS. 
 
 The degree of importance that should be attached to the 
 representation of like conceptions in the forms that are 
 grouped together, is difficult for some to recognize. Yet if, 
 as was said on page 344, the difference between the effects 
 of harmony and of discord be the difference between experi- 
 encing in the nerves an unimpeded, free, regularly recturent 
 vibratory thrill or glow, and experiencing an impeded, con- 
 strained, irregularly recurrent series of shocks or jars, then 
 an application of the simplest physiological principles ought 
 to show us that the artistic effects of which we have spoken 
 can be produced in part by the representation of like concep- 
 tions. It is universally admitted that the nerves, merely as 
 nerves, may be affected from the thought-side as well as 
 from the sense-side. Whatever, therefore, owing to incon- 
 gruity between thought and form or between different 
 thoughts as represented by different forms, shocks one's 
 conceptions or, as we say, one's sense of the proprieties, may 
 so contribute to the general nervous result that, even though 
 he may find the combinations of color thoroughly pleasing, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 8l 
 
 it is physiologically impossible that he should experience the 
 effects of beauty in its totality. On this subject the reader 
 may consult Chapter XIII. of **Art and Theory." — Propor- 
 tion and Harmony of Line and Color y xxi. 
 
 COMPARISON AS THE FOREMOST ART-METHOD {seC olso COM- 
 POSITION, IMAGINATION, LIKE WITH LIKE, and PAGE 89). 
 
 Every one knows that comparison is the very first result 
 of any exercise of the imagination. And he knows also 
 that imagination is the source of all art-production. When 
 a man begins to find in one feature the image of another, 
 and, because the two are alike, to put them together by way 
 of comparison, then, and then only, does he begin to con- 
 struct an art-product. And not only so, but only then 
 does he continue his work in a way to make it continue to be 
 a medium of expression. The forms which he elaborates are 
 naturally representative of certain phases of thought or 
 feeling, and the significance of the completed product de- 
 pends upon its continuing to represent these phases. But it 
 can continue to do this only when that which is added in the 
 process of elaboration is essentially like that with which the 
 process starts. It is a striking illustration of the rationality 
 which characterizes the action of the mind when working 
 naturally and instinctively though without knowledge of 
 reasons, that the forms of all the arts, as developed in 
 primitive ages, should fulfil this rational requirement. 
 . . . Looking at poetry, we find the chief characteristic of 
 its form to be lines of like lengths, divided into like numbers 
 of feet, each uttered in like time, to which are sometimes 
 added alHteration, assonance, and rhyme, produced by the 
 recurrence of like sounds in either consonants, vowels, or 
 both. So with music. The chief characteristic of its form 
 is a series of phrases of like lengths, divided into like num- 
 bers of measures, all sounded in like time, through the use 
 of notes that move upward or downward in the scale at like 
 intervals, with like recurrences of melody and harmony. 
 In painting, sculpture, and architecture, no matter of what 
 " style, " the same is true. The most superficial inspection 
 of any product of these arts, if it be of established reputation, 
 will convince one that it is composed in the main by putting 
 together forms that are alike in such things as color, shape, 
 size, posture, and proportion. ... It is an equally 
 striking illustration of the irrationality and departure from 
 
82 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 nature into which too much self-conscious ratiocination 
 may plunge the same mind, that, in our own more enlight- 
 ened age, art-forms should not only be tolerated but praised 
 — in poems and buildings for instance — in which the prin- 
 ciple of putting like with like has been utterly disregarded. 
 — The Genesis of Art Form, ii. 
 
 Ancient artists, with only their sensations to guide them, 
 constructed those harmonic systems of tone and of color, 
 of which modern science alone has discovered the causes. 
 These causes, as will be shown presently, are the same as 
 those that underlie all the developments of form in art, 
 being all traceable to the satisfaction which, for reasons 
 unfolded in "The Genesis of Art-Form," the mind derives 
 from being able, amid the variety and complexity of nature, 
 to form a conception of unity, and, through the general 
 method of comparison to embody this conception in a 
 product. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, vii. 
 
 In these volumes, the effects of form in art have been 
 traced to a single principle, and to the same principle have 
 been traced the effects of whatever significance also may 
 be expressed in each form. All art, in any of its manifesta- 
 tions, has been shown to be an emphasizing, through a 
 method of elaboration, of factors taken from one's surround- 
 ings, which are used not only in art, but in every attempt 
 at expression, for the purpose of representing, by way of 
 association or comparison, sometimes these surroundings 
 themselves, and sometimes the thoughts and emotions that 
 are communicated through them. Moreover, whether we 
 wish to emphasize the factors themselves, or the purpose for 
 which the mind uses them, each end is best attained by 
 putting, so far as possible, like with like in the sense of 
 grouping features having either corresponding effects upon 
 the mind, i. e., like significance; or corresponding effects 
 upon the senses, i. e., like forms ; or, as is frequently the case, 
 corresponding effects upon both the mind and the senses. 
 Stated thus, the principle may seem very simple and insig- 
 nificant. But any one who has read the volumes of this 
 series, and observed the applicability of the principle to all 
 possible effects of form in all the arts, together with the way 
 in which analogous effects in different arts have been corre- 
 lated to one another ; and who has observed also the applica- 
 bility of the principle to the mental effects of art, whether 
 produced by the grandest generalizations that can broaden 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 83 
 
 thought, and the profoundest passions that can excite 
 emotion, or only by the smallest specific accent of a syllable, 
 the measuring of a tone, the shading of a line, or the turning 
 of a little finger, — any one who has observed these facts, and 
 is at all appreciative of the vastness and complexity of the 
 subject, or is acquainted with the chaotic conditions in which 
 the histories of opinions have left men's common concep- 
 tions of it, or is merely aware of that which, in general, is 
 the distinctive aim of all philosophical analysis, — any such 
 man will recognize the degree in which, when the elements 
 investigated are made to seem single and simple, the 
 comprehensiveness and importance of the discussion are 
 enhanced. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 The reader needs to be reminded that the developments 
 resulting from putting like with like according to the methods 
 indicated in the chart on the opposite page, are mani- 
 fested not only in rhythm and proportion but also in har- 
 mony, whether of sound or sight, the difference between the 
 first two and the latter being that in the former we are 
 conscious of the elements that are put together, and in the 
 latter we are not conscious of them, and can only become 
 aware of them as a result of scientific demonstration. At 
 the same time, there are both sounds and sights which are 
 in the border-land, as we may term it, between these two 
 conditions. For instance, in a low tone of the organ we 
 can distinguish vibrations allying its effects to those of 
 rhythm almost as clearly as we can distinguish pitch allying 
 them to those of harmony. So in the case of this particular 
 curve, a reason for the use of which is indicated here in 
 accordance with the principles of proportion, — this ex- 
 planation will not prevent another, and perhaps a better one, 
 which will be given on page 292, and which ascribes it to 
 the principles underlying harmony of outline. — Idem, v. 
 
 COMPARISON IN ARCHITECTURE {see mention of it under 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, PERSPECTIVE, and PROPORTION). 
 
 Study will show that at the time of the Gothic and the 
 Renaissance revivals, the manifestation in buildings of the 
 principle of putting large numbers of like dimensions with 
 like, again came to be considered necessary. It is con- 
 sidered so in all great architecture. 
 
 In case our own builders ignore this fact, we can expect 
 but little from them. They may turn out of their planing 
 
84 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 mills or stone quarries, pillars that look like those of Greek 
 temples, or arches that look like those of Gothic cathedrals ; 
 they may discard these older models altogether, and try as 
 hard as savages to be original by bringing together dis- 
 cordant mixtures of shapes, sizes, styles, and colors, and 
 doom to eternal infamy the names of Queens Anne and 
 Elizabeth by calling their hotch-potch after them; but no 
 great architecture or school of architecture can be produced 
 in this way. Great architecture is founded upon principles 
 that are in the constitution of nature and of mind, the 
 applicability of which all men recognize. Nor can they be 
 ignored or neglected in any product of art without lessening 
 the force of its appeal to human interest. — Iderriy xiii. 
 Every list of figures that we have found proves . . . that 
 the Greek builder was careful to preserve the appearance of 
 putting like dimensions with like. This principle applied 
 to all the parts of a structure would determine its pro- 
 portions as a whole. If, in time, laws like those mentioned 
 by Vitruvius arose, it is more than likely that most of these 
 in the forms in which they have been preserved, were after- 
 thoughts, derived from what, at a period when architecture 
 was no longer in its prime, was discovered by measuring the 
 buildings of the fathers. Why it should ever have passed 
 its prime and begun to decline is easy to perceive. When 
 any form of art is young, men are never tired of going back 
 to first principles and experimenting with their designs, 
 not only in painting and sculpture but in architecture too, 
 just as often as effects seem unsatisfactory. After the 
 earlier, creative periods of the art, however, men begin to 
 think that the whole subject, and all its methods, have been 
 mastered. They imagine that no more practical experi- 
 ments are needed. They are first contented with what has 
 been achieved by their ancestors, and then they begin to 
 have a traditional veneration for it. That which should 
 stimulate them to thought, stirs them only to reverence, 
 and, like many of the critics and architects of our own 
 day, they come to teach in their schools, and to believe in 
 their hearts, that to be a successful imitator is to embody 
 the only praiseworthy artistic ideal. Undoubtedly this was 
 the fate that, after a time, overtook the architects of Greece. 
 They became imitators. Because their copies stood before 
 them,, they ceased to experiment. Because they did not 
 need to conceive their own designs they ceased to think 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 85 
 
 about them; and when they ceased to do this they neces- 
 sarily ceased to cause them to develop, and began to cause 
 them to deteriorate. Before long, they began to regard 
 as ends those methods which the great architects had used as 
 means. They reproduced the subordinate features in the 
 older temples, but overlooked the principal ones. Finally 
 all the measurements that they used grew discordant, and it 
 was beyond the power of any rules like those of Vitruvius 
 to make them otherwise. Columns, entablatures, and tym- 
 panums, bore a general resemblance to those upon the 
 Acropolis, but contained not one element that, in the 
 estimation of the merest tyro of the art, could entitle them 
 to be considered architectural models. . . . The Greek 
 temples emphasize results, which the others do not, attained 
 by putting like with like. All the best Greek buildings 
 show similar effects, and why? Because the Greek lived 
 near to nature. His buildings emphasized corresponding 
 measurements for the same reason as do the card houses of a 
 child. The Greek carried out the instinctive promptings 
 and prescriptions of the mind. It was in the endeavor to 
 do this that he originated those scientific adjustments to 
 accommodate actual proportions to optical requirements, 
 which will be considered in the following chapters. Only 
 much later did this end absorb the wh6le interest of builders, 
 as it has that of modern students who have examined their 
 works, and thus divert attention from more important 
 matters on account of which alone these optical require- 
 ments were at first studied. The result was on a par with 
 that of the exclusive attention paid to the secondary details 
 of poetic form in the time of Queen Anne, leading to the 
 pompous prosaic jingle that during most of the last cen- 
 tury passed in England for the only permissible poetic 
 phraseology. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 COMPARISON, PUTTING LIKE WITH LIKE ^N POETRY. 
 
 The illustrations used are sufficient ... to suggest to 
 what an extent the meanings of words, whether primary or 
 secondary, are developed according to the very closely 
 allied methods of association and comparison. Isolated 
 words, however, do not constitute language. Before they 
 can become this, they must be put into phrases and sen- 
 tences. But what are these phrases and sentences, again, 
 except words uttered consecutively in such a way that the 
 
86 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 order of their utterance or dependence upon one another 
 shall compare with the order, i. e., the direction or tendency, 
 of the different phases of the mental motive which prompts 
 to them? Through the whole extent of language, therefore, 
 which furnishes the material or medium for the expression 
 of poetry, we find in constant operation this process of 
 comparison. The same thing is true, but need not be 
 argued, with reference to metaphors, similes, and representa- 
 tions of characters and events, which all acknowledge to be 
 necessary to the further development of poetic language and 
 thought. — Art in Theory, xviii. 
 
 We cannot, without some important modification, frame 
 any rule to the effect that the uttering in succession of like 
 sounds is invariably euphonious. But should we, therefore, 
 draw the inference, as some do, that the opposite is true; in 
 other words, that in poetry the repetition of similar sounds 
 is not euphonious, and that here is a case in which the 
 principle of putting like effects with like does not apply? 
 Before drawing this conclusion, let us, at least, look farther 
 into the subject. . . . The vocal organs are so formed 
 that their positions and actions in an accented and in an 
 unaccented utterance are different. . . . 
 
 Moreover, the nature of the organs is such that ease of 
 utterance requires that both forms should be present, and 
 used in alternation. One cannot apply to consecutive 
 syllables without restriction, therefore, this principle of 
 comparison. Unaccented syllables must contrast with the 
 accented ones, and in such a way too as to complement them 
 (see page 89). But if this requirement be regarded, like 
 sounds repeated only on accented or only on unaccented 
 syllables, except in the sense in which all forms of repetition 
 may become monotonous and tiresome, are not open to 
 the objection urged. They do not render utterance more 
 difficult, as suggested above, but, on the contrary, decidedly 
 more easy. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, 
 
 VII. 
 
 COMPLEMENT {see CHART ON PAGE 89, CONTRAST, and 
 HARMONY OF COLOR). 
 
 Two things are complements when they contrast, and 
 yet, as they appear together, complete the one thing to 
 which they equally belong. They must be regarded, too, 
 in classification, because every department of nature is full 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS t1 
 
 of them. Certain kinds of metals and ores, leaves and 
 branches, males and females, alike in some regards, unlike 
 in others, are always found together, and are both necessary 
 to the realization of the type. So in the arts. In those of 
 sound, high and low tones contrast; and yet, if we are to 
 have rhythm, melody, or harmony, both are necessary. In 
 the arts of sight, light and shade contrast; and yet, if we 
 are to represent the effects of forms as they appear in sun- 
 light, both are necessary. In colors, again, certain hues, 
 like red and blue-green, contrast; and yet as both, when 
 blended together, make white, both may be said to be 
 necessary to the completeness of light. In all these cases 
 the contrasting factors are termed complements. The 
 principle which underlies their use is closely related, both in 
 reality and in ordinary conception, to the developments of 
 it in counteraction and balance. — The Genesis of Art- Form , li. 
 
 Complement produces unity in a natural way from things 
 different. Counteraction applies the principle underlying 
 complement to things that are not complementary by nature, 
 and produces, as we have seen, effects that are essential to 
 the very existence of form. Balance ^ going still farther, 
 applies the same principle to things that are neither com- 
 plementary nor counteractive, in such a way as to give a 
 more satisfactory appearance to the form by adding to it 
 the effect of equilibrium. A still later development of the 
 same principle, preceding which, however, there need to be 
 some intervening stages, results in symmetry. — Idem, iii. 
 
 COMPLEXITY {see BEAUTY ATTRIBUTED TO HARMONY). 
 COMPOSITION IN ART, METHOD OF {see CHART ON PAGE 89, and 
 
 mention of it under classification and comparison). 
 ^ How is a song or a symphony that is expressive of any 
 given feeling composed? Always thus: A certain duration, 
 force, pitch, or quality of voice, varied two or three times, is 
 recognized to be a natural form of expression for a certain 
 state of mind, — satisfaction, grief, ecstasy, fright, as the 
 case may be. A musician takes this form of sound, and adds 
 to it other forms that in rhythm or in modulation, or in both, 
 can be compared or associated with it, varying it in only 
 such subordinate ways as constantly to suggest it ; and thus 
 he elaborates a song expressive of satisfaction, grief, ecstasy, 
 or fright. Or if it be a symphony, the method is the same. 
 The whole, intricate as it may appear, is developed by recur- 
 
88 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 rences of the same or very similar effects, varied almost 
 infinitely but in such ways as constantly to suggest a few 
 notes or chords which form the theme or themes. A similar 
 fact is true with reference to poetic elaboration. What are 
 the following but series of comparisons, — reiterations of the 
 same particular or general idea in different phraseology or 
 figures? . . . 
 
 What do we have in the poetic treatment of a subject 
 considered as a whole, as in an epic or a drama? Nothing 
 but repeated delineations of the same general conceptions 
 or characters as manifested or developed amid different 
 surroundings of time or of place. So with the forms of 
 painting, sculpture, and architecture. Every one knows 
 that, as a rule, certain like lines, arches, or angles are repeated 
 in the columns, cornices, doors, windows, and roofs of build- 
 ings. Few, perhaps, without instruction, recognize that the 
 same principle is true as applied to both the outlines and 
 colors through which art delineates the scenery of land or 
 water or the limbs of living creatures. But one thing almost 
 all recognize : This is that, in the highest works of art, every 
 special effect repeats, as a rule, the general effect. In the 
 picture of a storm, for instance, every cloud, wave, leaf, 
 bough, repeats, as a rule, the storm's effect; in the statue 
 of a sufferer, every muscle in the face or form repeats, as a 
 rule, the suffering's effect; in the architecture of a building, 
 — if of a single style, — every window, door, and dome repeats, 
 as a rule, the style's effect. — Essentials of Esthetics, xiv. 
 
 COMPOSITION IN ART, METHODS OF (see CHART ON PAGE 89). 
 
 Art-composition is influenced first by mental and then by 
 material considerations. He (the artist) begins with a 
 conception which, in his mind, is associated with certain 
 forms or series of forms. To represent this conception is 
 his primary object. But he cannot attain it, unless the 
 forms, or series of forms, added by him in the process of 
 elaboration, continue to have the same general effect as 
 those with which he starts. About the latter therefore, as 
 a nucleus, he arranges other like forms according to the 
 general method of comparison. Controlled at first chiefly 
 by a desire to have them manifest this, in order to express 
 a like thought, or to be alike by way of congruity; afterwards 
 descending to details, he is careful to make them alike 
 by way of repetition and consonance. While thus securing 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 89 
 
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90 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 unity of effect, however, he is confronted by the variety and 
 complexity of the natural forms from which he is obliged 
 to construct his art-work. But he soon finds that these can 
 be adapted to his purposes through the methods of contrast 
 and complement; and, when it comes to grouping, he is able 
 still to suggest unity by fulfilling the requirements of order, 
 in spite of confusion, through counteraction and the arrange- 
 ment of factors in accordance with methods of principality, 
 subordination, balance, and organic form. — The Genesis of 
 Art-Form, ix. 
 
 It is the combined result of the application of all of these 
 methods that produces the general effect termed harmony. 
 — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xxiv. 
 
 COMPREHENSIVENESS AS AN ART-METHOD {see CHART ON 
 
 PAGE 89). 
 
 Who that has heard the earlier composed overture of 
 Wagner's **Tannhauser" — and the same question would 
 apply to the whole opera which this overture represented 
 and epitomized — can fail to recognize either how themes 
 thus contrasted may add to the interest, or how, by the way 
 in which they complement each other, they may augment 
 the comprehensiveness of the result ? In this overture, a slow 
 choral, representative of the religious element, is at first 
 entirely interrupted by wild contrasting movements, repre- 
 senting the surgings of the passions; then, after a little, it 
 reappears again, gains strength, and finally by main force 
 seems to crush the others down, and in the final strain en- 
 tirely to dominate them. Here, in the blending of the most in- 
 tensely spiritual and material of motives, is incongruity, and 
 with it a comprehensiveness including the widest extremes. 
 Yet how artistically the like features are grouped with like, 
 and each phase of expression made to complement the 
 other; and when the two clash, how principality gets the 
 better of what would else be insubordinate, and reduces all to 
 order! Incongruity in such cases really adds to the general 
 effect of congruity, because it suggests, as nothing else could, 
 the overwhelming power of that tendency to produce a single 
 effect upon thought, which finally blends the whole into a 
 unity. — The Genesis of Art-Form, ix. 
 
 CONGRUITY IN ART {see CHART ON PAGE 89). 
 
 Connecting objects because of like effects produced upon 
 the mind by way of association or suggestion may be 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 91 
 
 termed congruity (from con, together, and gruo, to grow). 
 It means that two things are conceived of as naturally- 
 growing or going together; and it may cause them to be 
 connected when in reality they are as unlike as the sounds of 
 a church bell and of an organ, or as the crape of a widow's 
 garb and a white face. — Ideniy vii. 
 
 Congruity might cause the artist to associate in a product 
 things as different essentially as rouge on a cheek and 
 blondined hair, or a hunting song and the sound of a horn ; 
 repetition, on the contrary, would demand as much like- 
 ness as in the allied factors of a piece of fringe, or of a picket- 
 fence, while consonance, half-way between the two, would 
 be satisfied were he to unite sounds as different in some 
 regards as those of the flute, the trumpet, the violin, and, 
 the drum, or shapes as different in some regards as a chim- 
 ney and a tower, or a window and a porch. In architecture, 
 a porch or a bay-window on one side of a building, and a wing 
 or hot-house on the other side of it, might be alike by way 
 of congruity. Windows and doors of the same sizes and 
 shapes would be alike by way of repetition; but merely a 
 similar pitch of angles over windows and doors and in the 
 gables of a roof above them, would be enough to make all 
 alike by way of consonance. — Idem, vii. 
 
 CONSERVATISM IMPORTANT IN ART. 
 
 It is a question whether the most enduring work of even 
 the most original artist is that in which he manifests to the 
 full his tendency to forsake the methods of his predecessors. 
 Wagner, for instance, will probably be remembered chiefly 
 not for the extended passages in his ** Siegfried " or "Tristan 
 und Isolde," in which he carried his theories to excess; 
 but for the passages mainly in the operas of his middle period 
 in which his themes were developed more in accordance with 
 the requirements of form as established by his predecessors. 
 That he neglected these requirements is more evident, per- 
 haps, in the works of his imitators than in his own. — Idem, iii . 
 
 CONTRAST, AS AN ART-METHOD {see mention of it under com- 
 parison, COMPLEMENT, COMPOSITION, HARMONY OF COLOR, 
 IMAGINATION AND COMPARISON, and PAINTING VS. POETRY). 
 
 When the modern artist, like the Greek, selects for repre- 
 sentation a certain part of nature, he does so because he has 
 contrasted it, and wishes others to contrast it, with the 
 whole of nature. When, again, in certain parts of his 
 
9* AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 picture, he wishes to bring some objects into the foreground 
 and to keep others in the background, his attempt is suc- 
 cessful in the degree in which light and shade and color are 
 arranged, according to scientific principles controlling con- 
 trasts, so that the objects, as they appear side by side, 
 shall be not only separated with the distinctness found in 
 nature, but shall also produce other distinctively comple- 
 mentary effects such as art seems to require. Moreover, 
 it is worth noticing as according with this principle, that 
 the excellence of subjects as manifestations of ideality is 
 measured by the degree in which they admit of originality in 
 the arrangement of contrasts. Hence a fruit-piece, in which 
 the forms and colors admit of little variation, ranks below 
 a landscape; a landscape, for the same reason, below one 
 representing human figures; which latter, in the details 
 both of line and color in posture, countenance, and dress, 
 admits of variations almost infinite. — Art in Theory, xix. 
 
 CONTRAST, REPRESENTING IMAGINATION {SBB IMAGINATION). 
 
 It is the effort of what we term the imagination — the 
 effort to find in one phenomenon the image of another, or to 
 find one like another — that leads the mind to compare, and 
 then, if it cannot do this, to contrast the two. In such 
 cases, therefore, the imagination is the underlying faculty 
 of mind called into exercise, comparison the primary method 
 in which it exercises itself, and contrast the secondary. As 
 applied to art, the primary position of comparison is still 
 further augmented by the fact that art-products always 
 spring from efforts to connect motives and ideas, and to 
 embody both in a single form. The result is that while the 
 phases of consciousness represented in the arts of sound 
 begin, as it were, with comparison, the forms that are pro- 
 duced in these arts, including, as they necessarily do, many 
 things that are not alike, involve also a consciousness and a 
 representation of contrast. The converse is also true, that 
 while the phases of consciousness represented in the arts of 
 sight begin with contrast, the production of a form which 
 shall be true to the appearances, or, as in architecture, to the 
 formative principles of nature, necessarily involves, also 
 the consciousness and representation of comparison. Only 
 in the exercise of comparison and contrast together is the 
 work of imagination, which is the faculty underlying all the 
 developments of art, complete. — Idem, xx. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 99 
 
 CONVENTIONAL FORM IN ART. 
 
 Just as everybody in Italy, before the time of Dante, sup- 
 posed that literature could be written in only Latin, though 
 unintelligible to the common people, so everybody in these 
 ages of decline had come to expect, in art, forms that were 
 not natural, and so far, for the reasons just given, not in- 
 telligible; and all were disappointed if they saw anything 
 else. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCES OF REPRESENTATIVE FEATURES OF SOUND 
 AND OF SIGHT (see also REPRESENTATION BY ASSOCIATION). 
 
 Sounds may differ not merely in duration or the quantity 
 of time that they fill ; but in force, or the stress with which 
 they are produced, making them loud or soft, abrupt or 
 smooth, etc. ; also in quality, making them sharp or round, 
 full or thin, aspirate or pure, etc. ; and in pitch, making them 
 high or low, or rising or falling in the musical scale. Sights, 
 too, may differ in analogous ways; i. e., not nierely in 
 extension or the quantity of space that they fill, which is the 
 same thing as size; but in contour, which is the same thing 
 as shape, and is shown by the appearance of forcible or 
 weak lines of light and shade; also in quality of color, which 
 has to do with their tints and shades and mixtures; and in 
 pitch of color, which is determined by the hue. 
 
 In addition to merely stating these facts, it may be well 
 to enlarge upon one or two of them. Notice, for instance, 
 how true it is that force which gives emphasis to sounds, 
 rendering them more distinct from one another than would 
 be the cajse without it, corresponds to light and shades which 
 emphasize and render more distinct the contour through 
 which one portion of space having a certain shape is clearly 
 separated from another. Notice, also, that accented and 
 unaccented syllables or notes, as they alternate in time, 
 perform exactly analogous functions to those of light and 
 shade, as they alternate in space. The impression of form, 
 for instance, which, so far as it results from metre, is con- 
 veyed by varying force and lack of force in connection with 
 divisions made in time, is the exact equivalent of that im- 
 pression of form which, so far as this results from shape, is 
 conveyed by varying light and shade in connection with 
 divisions made in space. Notice, again, that quality and 
 pitch are terms almost as much used in painting as in music, 
 quality in colors depending, in a way analogous to quality 
 
94 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 in sounds, on the mixture of hues entering into the general 
 effect; and pitch in colors depending on the subdivision 
 of light and its vibratory effects. Undoubtedly, too, it is 
 owing partly to a subtle recognition of the correspondences 
 just indicated that to certain effects in the arts both of sound 
 and of sight the more general terms, tone and color, have 
 come to be applied interchangeably. In connection with 
 the various divisions and subdivisions under which will 
 be treated the different phases of form to be considered it 
 is sufficient to say that duration, limited by pauses in connec- 
 tion with force, as applied to the accents of syllables or notes, 
 gives rise to rhythm; that extension, limited by outlines in 
 connection with light and shade, as applied to contour or 
 shape, gives rise to proportion; that quality and pitch of tone 
 taken together furnish the possibility of developing the laws 
 of the harmony of sound; and that quality and pitch of color 
 furnish the same possibility with reference to the laws of the 
 harmony of color. It is important to notice, too, that force 
 or accent, while having to do mainly with rhythm, has a 
 certain influence also upon tone — in poetry upon the tunes 
 of verse, and in music upon the melodic suggestions of 
 different degrees of animation; also that, in the same way, 
 light and shade, while having to do mainly with outline and 
 proportion, have a certain influence also upon color. They 
 change it in order to interpret the meaning which a colored 
 surface is intended to convey, as, for instance, whether it 
 is to represent what is flat or round. They suggest, too, 
 the vitality characterizing nature. Correspondingly, also, 
 it is important to notice that quality and pitch of sound are 
 often necessary for the full effects of force as applied to 
 rhythm; and that the same elements of color are often 
 necessary for the full effects of light and shade as applied to 
 proportion. In fact, when used in the same art, the differ- 
 ent special effects that enter into the general effects of 
 proportion and harmony which are now to be considered 
 are none of them produced exclusively according to one 
 method or to one combination of methods, but more or less 
 according to all of them when operating conjointly. — 
 Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, i. 
 
 COUNTENANCE {see olso IRREGULARITY). 
 
 The expression of mere individuality alone necessitates 
 having no two forms or faces in the world exactly alike. Yet 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS . 95 
 
 thousands of them may be equally beautiful; and tens of 
 thousands, though not equally beautiful, may be equally 
 attractive ; while, to the student of humanity, none can fail 
 to be interesting. — Paintings Sculpture, and Architecture as 
 Representative Arts, vi. 
 
 COUNTENANCES MAY BE REGULAR WHEN NOT GRECIAN 
 
 (see also regularity). 
 It must not be supposed, however, that countenances, 
 in order to meet the requirements of regularity, need to 
 be similar. In its way, a dog's face may be as regular as 
 a man's ; and there is no reason why one human face should 
 not be as regular as another, though both differ almost radi- 
 cally. Of course, this could not be the case, if by regularity 
 were meant conformity to a certain Greek type, which, as 
 must be confessed, is the generally accepted supposition. 
 Regularity, however, need not mean this; but only a con- 
 dition in which the general outlines sustain analogous rela- 
 tions to lines or spaces of like directions or measurements. 
 And there may be many different forms of which this can be 
 affirmed, all corresponding in principle though not in the 
 method of applying it. For this reason, when, as is probable 
 nine tenths of all Americans tell us that they consider these 
 faces more beautiful than any conforming to the Greek 
 type, they may be justified. According to the laws of form, 
 properly interpreted, such faces fulfil the principles of 
 proportion. But, besides this, according to the laws of 
 significance, as derived from our association with faces 
 of the ordinary American type, from our deductions with 
 reference to the characteristics manifested by them, and 
 from our sympathy with the persons possessing such char- 
 acteristics, it is perfectly in accordance with aesthetic prin- 
 ciples to say that, while as beautiful in form as are the Greek 
 faces, their beauty, to one of the race and country to which 
 they belong, is enhanced on account of its significance. — 
 Paintingy Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative 
 Arts, VI. 
 
 creative art. 
 It was said that the arts cannot create. But it was not 
 said that they cannot be creative. If by the creative we 
 mean the power which seems to represent divine intelligence 
 through the sights and sounds of nature, what can more 
 resemble this than can the power of him who makes a further 
 
96 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 use of these same sights and sounds for the purpose, through 
 them, of representing his own thoughts and feelings? Is 
 it strange that he should take delight and pride in work like 
 this, and in connection with it feel the sources of the deepest 
 inspiration stir within him? Who is there that could not 
 draw delight and pride and inspiration from the conscious- 
 ness of being in the least degree a follower, an imitator, a 
 child of Him who created the heavens and the earth? — 
 Art in Theory, v. 
 
 CRITIC, THE DESTRUCTIVE. 
 
 One is tempted by it toward the easy task of a destructive 
 critic in general, and to the easier task of destroying their 
 reputations in particular. But a man who becomes a 
 destructive critic, except when intellectual slaughter is 
 justified in order to prevent the slaughter of the truth which 
 he represents, is one who has turned from the discussion of 
 principles and is willing to imperil the acceptance of them 
 for the empty, often merely malicious satisfaction of doing 
 personal harm to those whom he should wish to help. In 
 the long run, to live and to let live is the wisest way of serv- 
 ing the truth, whether of mind or of heart. — The Genesis of 
 Art-Form, xv. 
 
 CRITICISM {see historic, standards, and taste). 
 
 CRITICISM, destructive. 
 
 The only valid arguments that can be urged against any 
 form of criticism must be connected in some way with a 
 proof that it is destructive and not constructive; or that, 
 if it be the latter, it becomes so by pointing to imitation and 
 not to invention; or, if to invention, only to methods of it 
 which necessitate a departure from the first principles of 
 the art rather than a development of them. — Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, xxi. 
 
 CRITICISM, EFFECTS OF, ON THE ARTIST(5ee olso STANDARDS OF) . 
 
 Criticism cannot produce personality, but can guide it 
 to successful performance. It can prevent that total waste 
 of ability which is invariably expended upon worthless 
 products, where either imitation or eccentricity has led 
 taste away from a recognition of standards which are as 
 enduring as the ages, because rationally deduced from prin- 
 ciples deeply seated in humanity and in nature. Rules of 
 art cannot create artistic ability; but they can cultivate it. 
 They cannot make a man a genius; but, if he have genius. 
 
^^^ 
 
 Type of an Assyrian Square 
 See pages g, 73,81, 82, 88, 147, 14S, 162 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 97 
 
 they can enable him to give it vent in such ways that it will 
 exert its due influence; and, if he live, as every man does, 
 where he must accommodate his productions to the demands 
 of those about him, the study of aesthetics can elevate con- 
 ceptions and tastes so as to give a higher aim to the efforts 
 which are directed to the satisfying of them. The born 
 artist may be a ruler of humanity by divine right ; but it is 
 art, the requirements of which can be taught and learned, 
 that alone can give him his government, army, palace, 
 throne, crown, and sceptre, and not only these, but the 
 subjects, too, who on account of their appreciation of the 
 significance of these will acknowledge his authority. — 
 Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 CRITICISM, SCIENTIFIC, NOT DETRIMENTAL TO ART. 
 
 There is less danger, therefore, than is sometimes sup- 
 posed, that scientific pursuits will diminish the facility of 
 one's imagination. There is always a possibility, of course, 
 that a single mode of thinking, if pursued exclusively, will 
 predominate in the mind; but if two modes be pursued 
 together, and especially if one be pursued for the direct 
 purpose of giving efficiency to the other, this aim will cause 
 both to be kept in use, and counterbalance the possibility. 
 As a fact, we find few instances in history in which a liberal 
 education, properly subordinated, has proved an injury 
 to the aesthetic nature, Milton wrote little poetry until 
 he had finished his political work. Goethe and Schiller 
 both profited much from the discriminating scientific criti- 
 cism to which, as appears in their correspondence, they were 
 accustomed to submit their productions ; at all events, they 
 achieved their greatest successes subsequent to it. And 
 with criticism playing all about his horizon, like lightnings 
 from every quarter of the heavens, who shall calculate how 
 much of the splendor of Shakespeare is attributable to this 
 by-play among the circle of dramatists by whom he was 
 surrounded? With new forms rising still like other Venuses 
 above the miasmas of the old Campagna, who shall estimate 
 how much the excellence of the Italian artists has been owing 
 to the opportunities afforded in historic Rome for critical 
 study? — The Representative Significance of Form, xiii. 
 
 CULTURE, AS INFLUENCED BY ART. 
 
 Art, in all its phases, is merely a compend of lifelong 
 studies in nature and in human conditions, reported by those 
 
98 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 with exceptional powers of perception, insight, and inference. 
 If men are to become wise, they must have experience. If 
 they cannot travel and become personally acquainted with 
 different parts of the world, and its inhabitants, they must 
 derive their experience from those who can do so. There 
 is no more efficient way of deriving this than from the pic- 
 tures, poems, dramas, and novels of great artists. But the 
 effects of art are so subtle, they depend upon so many 
 complex causes, that one can derive comparatively little 
 from it, until he has learned to do so. And when he has 
 learned this, the result is so connected with everything in his 
 whole complex constitution, with both mind and soul, that 
 not only his intellectual but his spiritual experience is 
 enlarged almost beyond measure. — Essay on Teaching in 
 Drawing. 
 
 CULTURE, AS RELATED TO SCIENCE VS. ART. 
 
 A scientific specialist with any amount of learning, if it 
 be merely learning, may not give any suggestion of what is 
 meant by culture. A man may study science all his life, 
 and never do it — which fact is the one irrefutable argument 
 against an entirely scientific course in our universities. But 
 it is impossible for one to be a student of art — a dabbler is 
 not meant now, but a student — and not begin to have some 
 culture, and this for the simple reason that he is obliged — ■ 
 a statement which cannot be made so absolutely with 
 reference to any other department of study — to experience 
 some of the results of practice. It will be foimd, too, that 
 the degree of his culture will often depend upon the degree of 
 the thoroughness with which he has studied some art in some 
 of its phases. — The Representative Significance of Form, xv. 
 
 CULTURE, AS RELATED TO TASTE (see olso TASTE). 
 
 The age is scientific, and the country's aims are directed 
 toward material progress. Both facts cause us to empha- 
 size the real rather than the ideal, the substance rather than 
 the suggestion, that which is held in the hand rather than 
 that which is conceived in the brain. In such conditions, the 
 phase of the play-impulse that prompts to art cannot tend 
 to give expression to its highest possibilities. A cowboy of 
 the West could take little pleasure in the Seventh Symphony, 
 the "Excursion," the "Sistine Madonna," the "Dying 
 Gladiator," or Roslyn Chapel; and, for this reason, no 
 artist of the Western plains would be stimulated to produce 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS ^99 
 
 its like. But taste in appreciation or production can be 
 cultivated; and, in the degree in which it is cultivated, a 
 new realm of thought will open for a man, and with it a 
 recognition, hitherto not experienced, of those almost 
 infinite correspondences between spiritual and material 
 relationships which every great product of art manifests. 
 Thus gradually the mind will enter a region of thought in 
 which the play-impulse, which, at first, is satisfied to expend 
 its energies upon the merely apparent and superficial, will 
 care for more than a fife and drum, a jingle of rhyme, a dash 
 of color, a trick of chiselling, or an incongruous pile of stone 
 and mortar. The mind will not be satisfied unless, at times 
 and often, music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architec- 
 ture suggest the profound and the sublime; in fact, unless 
 the humanities have had their perfect work, and art has 
 become humanizing in all of its relations. To open such a 
 region to the mind, has been the object of the work of which 
 these volumes contain the records. — Proportion and Har- 
 mony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 CULTURE, WHAT IT IS. 
 
 What, according to the conceptions of men in general, is 
 a man of culture? Does not the following describe him? 
 He is one who has been educated in the sense of having 
 been trained ; who has not only a brain but a working brain ; 
 who is prepared therefore to deal not only with information 
 but with suggestion ; a man whose aims in study — to express 
 his condition in terms to accord with the general thought 
 presented in this volume — ^have regarded duly both the 
 conscious and the subconscious powers of mind; a man 
 whose memory is able to recall from his own experience 
 and that of others, from history current and past, from 
 books and life, the scores and hundreds of associated 
 facts and fancies teeming about, and through, and be- 
 yond the immediate object of consideration; a man 
 whose sphere of thought belongs, therefore, not to the 
 small but to the great, not to the single but to the uni- 
 versal; a man whose whole nature is open to the cur- 
 rents of tendency moving in upon him from all directions, 
 and is prepared both to apprehend and to comprehend, 
 to appreciate and to appropriate whatever truth may 
 loom from any quarter. — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, XV. 
 
100 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 DECLINE IN ART. 
 
 It is a fact overlooked by many how rapidly art, owing 
 to its other necessarily imitative methods, when it once 
 begins to decline, continues to do so. The sense of pro- 
 portion in the human face and form was entirely lost once, 
 and recovered again, during the period of the art of ancient 
 Egypt. It was lost in Europe all the time between the third 
 and thirteenth centuries. It has been lost many times in 
 China and Japan. In architecture, as developed in Greece, 
 the same sense was lost before Rome was in its prime. It 
 continued lost till the rise of Gothic architecture. It is lost 
 again in our own time. The simplest principles of propor- 
 tional perspective, which the Greek applied to buildings 
 precisely as we do to pictures, are not merely misappre- 
 hended, but are not considered possible cither of apprehen- 
 sion or of application by our foremost architects. — Essay 
 on Art and Education. 
 
 DECLINE, NATIONAL, ATTRIBUTED TO ART. 
 
 It has been seriously maintained by certain writers that 
 the development of art in a nation is contemporaneous with 
 its intellectual and politic?!, but especially with its social 
 and moral, decline. At first thought, too, this theory has 
 seemed well founded. Though not true of poetry, the fine 
 arts never reveal their full possibilities in any land, until 
 many individuals have come to have sufficient wealth and 
 leisure to enable them to become patrons or producers of 
 that which is ornamental as well as useful. Nor does de- 
 cline come to a nation until exactly the same conditions 
 of wealth and leisure have caused many to care more for 
 luxury than for right living. There is, therefore, a certain 
 connection between artistic development and national 
 decline. The connection, however, is not that of cause and 
 effect, but merely of coincidence. Indeed, considered in this 
 light only, a more careful study of history will reveal that the 
 connection is by no means as close or inevitable as is some- 
 times represented. As a fact, centuries elapsed between the 
 age of Pericles and the intellectual and political decline of 
 ancient Greece. Rome survived by almost as long a time 
 her most flourishing period of architecture and sculpture. 
 Other agencies than those of art could be shown to underlie 
 the partial decline of Italy and Spain between the seven- 
 teenth and nineteenth centuries; and there is no indis- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL C0MMB.nTS.\v :' ^ ;;,. :.,ip| 
 
 putable proof of any deterioration whatever in any of the 
 other nations of Europe as a consequence of their artistic 
 activity during the last three centuries. — Essay on Art and 
 Morals. 
 
 DECORATIVE VS. PICTORIAL ART {see olso PAINTING). 
 
 Decorative differs from pictorial art, primarily, in the 
 motive. In a picture, color is used in order to reproduce an 
 appearance of nature. In decoration it is used for its own 
 sake. While in the former, therefore, all possible shades and 
 tints may be introduced, so long as, in some way, they can 
 be made to harmonize ; in the latter, those only ought to 
 be introduced which of themselves harmonize naturally. 
 Connected with this difference in motive, is the same differ- 
 ence that was noticed on page 175 of "Rhythm and Har- 
 mony in Poetry and Music" between sounds in speech and 
 in music. In the one, every possible degree of pitch may be 
 used; in the other, only certain degrees separated from one 
 another by decided intervals. Of course, the method of 
 gradation is exemplified both in pictures and decoration ; but 
 in decoration the colors used are, as a rule, separated from 
 one another by more decided intervals, such as are indi- 
 cated in the color-chart on page 334; and they are more apt 
 to be full hues, than light or dark modifications of these 
 such as are generally found in painting. These hues are 
 placed, sometimes, side by side; but they produce better 
 effects when separated by black, white, gold, or silver lines, 
 which lessen the influence of the adjoining colors on one 
 another. Moreover, while painting deals largely with the 
 greens, light blues, and grays predominating in the world 
 about us, decoration shows a large use of the reds, oranges, 
 yellows, and dark blues, as if one design of it were to produce 
 contrasts to the colors seen in nature. Again, as imitation 
 of form or outline in decoration is often of little importance, 
 almost the entire effect depending upon the selection and 
 arrangement of colors, it is still more necessary than in 
 painting that these should be grouped so as to fulfil strictly 
 scientific principles. — Proportion and Harmony of Line arid 
 Color, XXV. 
 
 DEGENERATION IN ART. 
 
 Does this comment seem to involve treating evident 
 absurdities too seriously? Does any one feel prompted to 
 excuse them because they are merely manifestations of a 
 
i<J(ir.,^/'?,;;^':;:a1V AST-PEILOSOPHEKS CABINET 
 
 Species of play? So, as shown in Chapter VII. of *'Art in 
 Theory, " is all art. The point to be observed is that the 
 manner of the play reveals the matter of the art-conception. 
 Besides this, it is important to observe, too, that, owing to 
 the necessarily imitative action of the mind in connection 
 with all art-development, nothing can degenerate quite so 
 rapidly, when allowed once to start in the wrong direction, 
 as art can. If any one doubts that we are getting ready, at 
 short notice, to take a stride all the way back to the artistic 
 conditions of the middle ages, it might be well for him to 
 ponder the facts just mentioned. Why are they facts? 
 There can be only one of two reasons, — either because too 
 few inventive brains are left among our artists to give us 
 products representative both of mind and of nature; or 
 else because too few aesthetic brains are left among our 
 patrons of art to make demands upon the artists which will 
 necessitate their finding out exactly what art is. — Paintings 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, xii. 
 
 DESIGN, WHAT IT IMPLIES. 
 
 A cousin of mine went to a ball. He came back raving 
 about a young miss fresh from the country who had fas- 
 cinated him there. A few days later, he was told that she 
 was an experienced coquette who had long been out of her 
 teens. Then he began to talk of her arts, he began to recog- 
 nize in her a creature of design. And we shall find that 
 universally when we speak of art, whether of its lowest or 
 highest manifestations, — all the way from sighs to sym- 
 phonies or canes to cathedrals, — we mean something which 
 is a manifestation of design. — Art in Theory, i. 
 
 DETAILS, COPIED MAINLY IN LATE DEVELOPMENTS OF 
 IMITATIVE WORK. 
 
 Now, with this thought in mind, turning again to the 
 other arts, notice that an increase in the imitation of the de- 
 tails of natural appearances has a tendency to increase the 
 same in the treatment determining the general outlines 
 also. As a rule the general plot, i. e., the general outline, 
 of a ballad has to do mainly with mere events; the plot of 
 an epic, which comes later, with details concerning the 
 persons engaged in these events; the plot of a drama, which 
 comes still later, with additional details representing the 
 characters of these persons ; and the plot of a descriptive — 
 as distinguished from a narrative — poem, which comes yet 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 103 
 
 more late, with added details representing one's natural 
 surroundings. So in music. Only in later compositions, 
 as in the oratorios of Haydn, or the operas of Wagner, is the 
 plot unfolded by so analogous or imitative a use of harmony 
 that the melody is reduced to recitative. So too in painting 
 and sculpture. A reproduction of the general outlines of 
 form, as by the painters of the middle ages, was once con- 
 sidered all that was necessary. Now there are schools of 
 criticism whose sole applied test of excellence seems to be 
 accuracy in the delineation of the minutiae of appearance. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 XXI. 
 
 In accordance, now, with everything that has been said 
 in this volume, let us notice the order of the development of 
 the representation of appearances in architecture as fulfill- 
 ing the principles of correspondence by way, first, of associa- 
 tion or suggestion; and, later, of comparison or imitation. 
 On page 8 it was said that in association things are con- 
 nected that have a like general effect, though they may not 
 seem alike in their details; whereas in comparison things 
 are connected that in their details as well as in their general 
 effects seem alike. In strict conformity with this order of 
 representative development, notice that in poetry, music, 
 painting, and sculpture, the first effect which the primitive 
 artist tries to reproduce is a general outline of something, 
 either of a story, or of a method of intonation, as in a rude 
 ballad or chant; or of a figure of a man or a beast, as in a 
 rude sketch by pencil or chisel. Notice, too, that even when 
 the desire for ornamentation is quite strong, he is satisfied, 
 at first, merely by emphasizing the factors of outline as in 
 measures and verses, or in colors and shadings. The early 
 poet does not usually give that careful attention to minutiae, 
 which in more civilized times causes a distinctively poetic 
 style, and he never has what is termed a flowery style, by 
 which, as usually interpreted, is meant a style excessively 
 full of comparisons. Nor does the earlier musician make 
 any attempt at the significant accompaniments and florid 
 variations which come later; nor does the earlier painter or 
 sculptor imitate in color or line the less obvious appearances 
 of surfaces and textures. So with architects. . . . long 
 after pillars were given capitals and care was taken with the 
 arrangements of entablatures and pediments, no ornamenta- 
 tion appeared except in the way of giving additional em- 
 
104 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 phasis to their necessary characteristics. But just as the 
 straight onward flow of poetic style begins, after it passes 
 the ballad period, to be filled up with allusions, mainly 
 associative and suggestive, and after that with minute 
 descriptions of flowers, plants, streams, mountains, and the 
 various men and living creatures that can be seen surround- 
 ing one, so the straight onward lines of architectural style, 
 when it gets beyond the archaic period, begin to be filled up 
 with, first, associative suggestions, and after that with care- 
 ful imitations of the appearances of nature. . . . Yet, at 
 first, the imitation is only partial. That is, parts of certain 
 natural forms are copied, but they are not put together as 
 in nature. . . . Later than these partially imitated 
 figures, though now, of course, often found in the same 
 buildings with them, come those that are fully imitated, 
 — the method of dealing with forms, which we find in the 
 later decorated Gothic. — Idem, xx. 
 
 DISCORD IN ART {see olso BEAUTY ATTRIBUTED TO HARMONY, 
 
 and harmony) . 
 It is difficult to conceive how a man who has never studied 
 the subject at all can fail to detect the blunders in some of 
 the discords above. Certainly few children playing with 
 building blocks would make mistakes analogous to them. 
 The outline of the toy houses that they construct are usu- 
 ally consonant at least. Why is this not the case with those 
 planned by architects ? For the same reason, probably, that 
 many in other arts — musicians, elocutionists, painters — 
 owing to false methods of studying or of applying rules, 
 seem to be unable to sing, speak, or color in a natural way. 
 Certain methods of studying or applying the law^s of archi- 
 tecture seem to have a corresponding effect. Those who 
 should be conversant with them neglect to exemplify require- 
 ments that are the most instinctive of which we know. — • 
 The Genesis of Art- Form, xv. 
 
 DRAMATIC ART {see olso EPIC). 
 
 Like marriage and religion, dramatic art is one of those 
 human activities to which, as things are, no one can put an 
 end; and, at certain periods — as, for instance, at the time of 
 the morality plays — its influence has been just the contrary 
 of debasing. What is needed is an endeavor not to abolish 
 but to correct; and, so far as the nature of art has been 
 misunderstood, a first step in doing this must be taken by 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS I05 
 
 giving people more accurate conceptions with reference to 
 what art really requires. — Essay on Art and Morals. 
 
 DRAMATIC ART DEALING WITH HISTORY. 
 
 Just as a magnifying glass modifies all the points of inter- 
 est in an object to which it is applied, so it seems permissible 
 at times for imaginative art to do — in case, like the glass, it 
 does not change the relative proportions of the parts to one 
 another and to the whole. A poet, like a painter, has a 
 right to increase the interest and beauty of the life that 
 furnishes his model by means of the medium — the modern 
 medium too — through which he is supposed to contemplate 
 it. Otherwise, the subject with which he deals could not 
 be treated from a present and poetic view-point, and his 
 works would not be worth the ink expended on them. All 
 the consideration for truth which it seems reasonable to 
 expect of the historic dramatist is that, in a medium, the 
 component parts of which are necessarily made up of the 
 language and methods of thought natural to his own time, 
 he should represent, in their relative proportions, the par- 
 ticular motives and feelings as well as the general atmos- 
 phere of thought natural to the conditions existing at the 
 time of the events forming the basis of his plot. — Introduc- 
 tion to ''The Aztec God.'' 
 
 DRAMATIC ART, IN A CLASS BY ITSELF. 
 
 Take the dramatic art — a better term, by the way, than 
 histrionic, though perhaps, because liable to be confounded 
 with dramatic literature, not so distinctive a term as 
 dramatics — take this art. In important particulars, it 
 certainly stands at the centre of the higher aesthetic system, 
 containing in itself, as it does, the germs of all its artistic 
 possibilities. It may use not alone the sustained intona- 
 tions of the voice that are developed into melody and music, 
 but also the unsustained articulations that are developed 
 into language and poetry ; and besides these, too, it may use 
 the posturing in connection with surrounding scenes and 
 persons and stage settings that are developed into painting, 
 sculpture, and architecture. Why then is it not usually 
 included in the same class with music, poetry, painting, 
 sculpture, and architecture? Is not this the reason? — 
 Because its effects result mainly from the use of means of 
 expression that are connected with the artist's own body, 
 whereas the other arts necessitate the use and consequent 
 
io6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 production of a medium of expression that is external to him. 
 There is Httle doubt that externaHty in this sense is import- 
 ant in order to give completeness to the conception of a 
 product of art as a thing that is made. — Art in Theory y ix. 
 
 DRAWING, INFLUENCE OF INSTRUCTION IN. 
 
 As we sit in our homes and examine our surroundings, we 
 discover in them artistic appearances infinitely beyond the 
 number of those which any one man, looking at the World 
 about him, could suppose that this could in any way suggest. 
 These appearances are everywhere, whether we look at the 
 carpet, wall-paper, table-service, bric-^-brac, or furniture. 
 As manifested in all these places, they indicate the exact 
 degree of the taste of those who have made or have pur- 
 chased them. Much of this taste, too, as well as the ability 
 to express it in production, has been cultivated in children 
 when learning to draw and color. But this is not all. 
 Dependent primarily on the same taste and ability, are the 
 house itself, the garden surrounding it, the town in which it 
 stands, with its business blocks and churches, the county 
 with its roads and parks, and the whole country with its 
 harbors, canals, and railways, with all the century's various 
 methods of development and transportation. All these 
 necessitate, on the part of promoters or inventors, the draw- 
 ing of plans, plots, charts, maps, and designs. If so, it may 
 be doubted whether, after reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
 any branch of instruction begins the knowledge of that 
 which is destined to prove more generally useful in life, than 
 does instruction in drawing. — Essay on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 DRILL IN EDUCATION (see olso INSPIRED, PRACTICE, and SKILL). 
 
 We need to have impressed upon our minds the fact that 
 drill and discipline are not merely a subordinate function, — 
 they are the chief function of education up to the period of 
 adolescence. Studies intended merely to inform or explain, 
 instead of being crowded down, as now, into periods earlier 
 than this, should be crowded up and out, — not because they 
 have no importance, but because, at this period, other 
 mental requirements that it is impossible to cultivate later 
 in life have greater importance. Exactly the same method 
 pursued in making a scholar in music should be pursued in 
 making any scholar. You want the man when grown to 
 be well informed. Very well, then, you must sharpen his 
 memory when young, so that the information that he gets 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 107 
 
 when older will stick. You want the man, when grown, 
 to be a thinker. Very well, then, when young you must 
 keep his mind awake by quizzing — tickling it, even in 
 the sense of playing with it. Such questioning will accus- 
 tom him to search for what is inside his mind, to dive into 
 the depths of consciousness and to bring every link in the 
 chain of thought to the light. Hypnotize him, and you will 
 find that, however hidden, what you want is inside of him. 
 He has not forgotten or lost any fact or principle that ever 
 was his. He merely fails to be able to recall or use it. If 
 you train him properly, he can do both. — Essay on Music 
 as Related to Other Arts. 
 
 EARLIER ART PRODUCTS {see also HOMER). 
 
 Who has not asked himself why it is that to-day we find 
 so many of the best models of art in all its branches among 
 the earlier products of the kind? And what is the answer? 
 Is not one reason to be found in the fact that, in the absence 
 of specimens of the sister arts which crowd around and 
 confuse the aims of the modern workman, the ancient one 
 was in a better condition to confine himself to the legitimate 
 promptings of the phase of consciousness natural to his own 
 art ? — The Representative Significance of Form, xxv. 
 
 EDUCATION INVOLVES HARD WORK. 
 
 One theory of our modern educational quacks — who seem 
 to have forgotten the experiences of their youth because 
 only imagination, which they have not, is able to recall them 
 — ^is that education should not be made either hard or dis- 
 ciplinary; on the theory that it cannot thus be made enter- 
 taining, — as if it could not be, at one and the same time, 
 both, — as if the mind, like the body, did not enjoy exertion, 
 and the triumph of overcoming, in the very degree of the 
 difficulty involved! The idea of recommending a game to 
 a growing boy on the ground of its being easy ! In the olden 
 times, some of the most pleasant hours of almost every 
 childhood were spent when all the school were assembled 
 together, in order to be drilled. Of course, such a method 
 of teaching, to be interesting, requires an interesting instruc- 
 tor; but so does any successful method of teaching. — Essay 
 on Music as Related to Other Arts. 
 
 EFFECTIVENESS OF WORKS OF ART. 
 
 There is a sense, too, in which this art is often able to 
 repeat the most effective even of nature's operations in the 
 
io8 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 most effective way. What is it in nature that operates the 
 most powerfully ? Not the wind or fire or earthquake, but 
 rather the still small voice, sighing for us in the silence of our 
 reveries. So in the works of man, not in the railway or the 
 telegraph, in the rattle or the flash of material forces that 
 deafen or dazzle us, do we apprehend the presence of the 
 most resistless power. Just as frequently, more frequently, 
 perhaps, we recognize it in connection with those products 
 of art which, though they seemingly may influence activity 
 as slightly as the ministering angels of a dream, yet, like 
 them too, come often summoning souls to high companion- 
 ship, and everything that this can signify, with all that is 
 most true and good and beautiful. — Art in Theory, ii. 
 
 ELLIPSIS, AS USED IN POETRY {see also OBSCURITY). 
 
 There is a significant connection between these effects 
 and the use of the rhetorical hiatus and ellipsis which are 
 so general in poetry, and so generally regarded as legitimate. 
 These figures of speech seem invariably to suggest that the 
 thoughts of the writer are moving forward in time, and 
 that he must not try to elaborate them. He must hurry on 
 to something else. In the majority of cases, too, hiatus 
 follows a reference to something that is aside from the main 
 line of thought, something that the writer conceives of as 
 existing side by side with that with which he is dealing, 
 something involving, therefore, an appeal that is suggestive 
 to the imagination. One secret of Robert Browning's 
 power lay in this use of ellipsis. But he sometimes carried 
 the figure too far. — The Representative Significance of Form, 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Omission or ellipsis is an exaggeration of terseness in 
 style, which is often a great excellence. In all kinds of 
 writing, but especially in that appealing to the imagination, 
 it is a fault to express too much. Those to whom poetry 
 is naturally addressed derive their main satisfaction, and 
 therefore interest, from that which influences them in the 
 way of suggestion, leaving their fancies free to range where 
 and as they will. — Poetry as a Representative A rt, xiv. 
 
 ELLIPTIC-LANCEOLATE SHAPE AS USED IN ART. 
 
 Dr. M. Foster says in his *' Text-Book of Physiology," 
 sec. ii., on Binocular Vision — that "when we use both eyes 
 a large part of the visual field of each eye overlaps that of 
 the other; but that, nevertheless, at the same time, a 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 109 
 
 certain part of each visual field does not so overlap any part 
 of the other. The dimensions of the field of sight for one 
 eye will, . . . be approximately circular. " But, so far as 
 this is true, notice that the whole field of sight — not for one 
 eye, but for both eyes when acting conjointly — is repre- 
 sented neither by the single circle . . . nor by . . . two 
 separated circles ; but rather by the space enclosed between 
 . . . two circumferences of the circles where they overlap, 
 . . . This space has the shape termed by botanists 
 elliptic lanceolate, — an ellipse pointed; and of all outlines 
 wholly curved, those of an upright elHpse fit into it most 
 nearly. 
 
 The bearing of this upon our present subject is found in 
 the fact that the whole of a form facing us can be recognized 
 with ease, i. e., in a single glance, or, at least, a single con- 
 scious glance, in the degree in which it is conformed to 
 vertical elhp tic-lanceolate outlines. Indeed, this fact thus 
 theoretically unfolded, can be confirmed by practical experi- 
 ments. If we describe at the nearest point at which it is 
 posible to perceive all its outlines, an ellipse longer vertically 
 than horizontally, and about it a circle of the same diameter 
 as the vertical length of the ellipse, there will be not a few 
 who will find it slightly more easy at a single glance, or with- 
 out consciously changing the axis of the eye, to perceive all 
 the outlines of the former than of the latter. If we describe 
 about the circle and ellipse a square of the same diameter as 
 the circle, no one can see all its outlines without consciously 
 changing the axis of the eye, as when glancing from corner 
 to corner; and if we describe about the square a rectangle of 
 the same vertical but twice the horizontal dimensions, we 
 cannot see all its outlines without changing the axis still 
 more consciously. 
 
 In the use of the eyes, the difference between movement 
 and no movement, or no conscious movement, is the differ- 
 ence between activity, work, or effort, and rest, play, or 
 enjoyment. But this is the same difference as in Chapter 
 III. of this book is said to separate that which is done with 
 a utilitarian aim and an aesthetic. If a form of outline 
 naturally fitting into the shape of an upright elliptical 
 figure, be the one which requires, to recognize it, the least 
 visual activity, work, or effort, then this form must be the 
 one most conformed to the physiological requirements of the 
 eye. In other words, it is the form most in harmony with 
 
no AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 these requirements ; therefore the most agreeable, the most 
 pleasurable, the most ''fitted to be perceived," which is 
 the exact etymological meaning of the word (Esthetic. This 
 fact furnishes the best possible justification for calling the 
 curve — particularly, as we shall notice presently, the one 
 found in the ellipse — the line of beauty. 
 
 What has been thus found to be true with reference to 
 the elliptical contour, renders significant many whole 
 classes of facts with which few of us can fail to be familiar. 
 Recall, for instance, the extensive use in art of this elliptical 
 shape. If we go into the shops where they sell implements 
 for drawing, whatever else they may not keep, assortments 
 of models for different sizes of ellipses are sure to meet our 
 eyes. The one ornamental object, avowedly not modelled 
 after an appearance in nature, which the arts of all lands 
 and races have united in producing, is the vase; and this is 
 almost invariably conformed to vertical elliptic-lanceolate 
 outlines. Again, in architecture, the form that general 
 usage has shown to be the most satisfactory is one which, 
 whether we consider it as exemplified in the cupola or the 
 dome, is . . . described within the space enclosed between 
 circles . . . and even if the building be wide, the form 
 preferred for this is one containing at least a central part 
 which . . . it is possible to enclose in such a space. 
 Notice, too, how the human form as a whole fits into the 
 same elliptic-lanceolate shape. — The Essentials of Esthetics, 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ELOCUTION A GUIDE TO RHETORIC. 
 
 A man who knows just where to pause and emphasize in 
 order to produce the best elocutionary effects, will know also 
 how to arrange his words the most effectively when writing. 
 Still greater will be the influence of the same fact upon his 
 oratorical rhetoric. He will instinctively come to present 
 his thoughts not only rhythmically but emphatically. His 
 good elocution will secure him an audience when he speaks, 
 and often, too, when what he speaks is put into print. — 
 Essay on Elocution in the Theological Seminary. 
 
 ELOCUTION, AS INTERPRETING THE ART PRINCIPLE. 
 
 The form to which the elocutionist must apply the result 
 of technique is a part of himself. Therefore, he, of all artists, 
 is least liable, in his own conceptions, to divorce the form of 
 expression from the significance of expression. Take any 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS iii 
 
 elocutionary system and you will see the truth of this, — 
 that of Delsarte, for instance. What does it suggest ? To 
 half of us the importance and possibility of accurately 
 representing significance in the form. But to the other 
 half, it suggests gymnastic technique — the importance and 
 possibility of adapting the form to every possible require- 
 ment of grace. At the same time, to all of us it suggests 
 something of both conceptions. Such a result is not so 
 inevitable in any other art. Nor is it an unimportant 
 mission of elocution, as I conceive, to make it inevitable in 
 all the arts. But, while doing this, and because doing it, 
 our branch of instruction has a broader mission still. What, 
 as well as it, can enable a man to realize that he has a soul 
 of which his body is merely an instrument, an instrument 
 that can be made to signal any purpose, or to trumpet any 
 call? And the man who recognizes that the human form 
 can be transfigured by the influence of soul, — is not he the 
 one most likely to recognize that, by way of association or 
 suggestion, all forms can be thus transfigured? — Essay on 
 the Function of Technique. 
 
 ELOCUTION, AS RELATED TO ALL EXPRESSION. 
 
 The man who has learned how to arrange tones and pauses 
 in reading is the man who can best arrange what can be 
 easily read by others. Where elocution is properly taught, 
 not once in a score of times, will you find a prize writer in 
 an upper class who has not started by being a prize speaker 
 in a lower class. When Wendell Phillips made a special 
 study of elocution at Harvard, by his side studied Motley, 
 the historian. But, beyond its influence upon literary 
 excellence, the kind of practice necessitated in elocution, 
 and its very apparent effects, are a revelation to large 
 numbers of students of the true method through which 
 thought and feeling can make subservient to themselves 
 the agencies of expression in any department whatever that 
 necessitates the acquirement of skill ; indeed, a revelation of 
 how, if at all, the mind can master the whole body or any of 
 its bodily surroundings. — Idem. 
 
 ELOCUTION, AS RELATED TO OTHER ARTS. 
 
 It is not only an art, but also, in an important sense, the 
 art of arts, the centre and fountain of the whole aesthetic 
 system. When the fountain plays, there is melody and 
 rhythm in the rush of its spray and the ripple of its overflow ; 
 
112 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 there is color and line in the sunlit bow crowning its brow 
 and in the ghost-like shadow shrinking from the touch of 
 moonlight or the frost. But there would be nothing to hear 
 or to see, except for the fountain itself. Nor would there 
 be anything of the whole art-system except for elocution. 
 Make that which can echo a man's intonations, symboHze 
 his articulations, imitate his postures and the hues and 
 outlines that surround him, and you have the possibilities 
 of music, poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. 
 Whatever more these latter arts include, they gain all their 
 uses and meanings from the previous use which an imma- 
 terial soul has made of its material body. Art is human 
 sentiment made incarnate in the forms of nature; and 
 it first touches nature in the human form, as in elocution. — 
 Idem. 
 
 ELOCUTION, ITS INFLUENCE ON LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 "In reading without utterance aloud," says Alexander 
 Bain, in his " Rhetoric," "we have a sense of the articulate 
 flow of the voice as it appeals to the ear." If this be so, 
 the deduction is unavoidable that the man who, himself, 
 knows how to read with ease will be the most likely to know 
 how to select and to arrange words so that they can be read 
 with ease by others. He will be the most likely to know 
 just where to introduce the accents causing natural rhythm, 
 the pauses enabling one to breathe without effort, and the 
 important words emphasizing the sense; to know where to 
 hasten the movement by short sentences and syllables that 
 one can pronounce quickly, and where to retard it by long 
 sentences and syllables that have to be uttered slowly ; to 
 know how to balance the sound-effects of epithets and 
 phrases, when ideas are to be contrasted, or to parallel them 
 when they are to be compared ; to know how to let the sugges- 
 tions of proof, if decisive, unwind like a cracking whiplash at 
 the end of a periodic sentence or climax, or, if indecisive, un- 
 ravel into shreds at the end of a loose sentence or an anti- 
 climax; to know how to charge his batteries of breath with 
 consonants and clauses that hiss, whine, roar, or rattle, and 
 give thought the victory over form, through rhyme that is 
 loaded with reason, and rhythm that repeats the thought- 
 waves pulsing in the brain, or only to waste his energies in 
 cataloguing names for things that never waken realization 
 of what they cannot picture, that never rouse imagination 
 save as they first lull to dreams, and that never stir one 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 113 
 
 vivid feeling except of gratitude when their dull details are 
 at an end. — Essay on the Literary Artist and Elocution. 
 
 ELOCUTION, PROFESSORSHIP OF {see also teacher). 
 
 The inexperienced conception of a professorship like 
 ours is more likely to be that of a man spending all his time 
 in enlarging the range of Demosthenes and Shakespeare by 
 his own contributions, blowing their dead phrases to a glow 
 with the breath of his own inflections, and starring their 
 every climax with the rays of his own gestures; above all, 
 exhibiting his familiarity with the very gods themselves, by 
 pointing the end of every criticism with a rocket bursting 
 into a temporary rivalry of Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn and 
 the whole galaxy of the empyrean. 
 
 As a fact, however, no boy was ever more cramped and 
 smothered, while playing dumb orator, than some of us 
 have been, spending so much of our lives, as we have, almost 
 literally kneeling behind those who, but for us, would have 
 had little more influence in the world than the dumb and 
 the halt — and with what result ? Not infrequently a comic 
 result ; for this is a world of incongruities. The born genius 
 to whom we have been conscious of offering a few hardly- 
 needed suggestions, may thankfully attribute all his success 
 to our efforts. But the man whom we have literally created 
 from the diaphragm up, sending into certain parts of his 
 lungs for the very first time the real breath of life, is not 
 seldom inclined to resent the impious insinuation that to 
 any influence less than that of divinity could be attributed 
 what he has become. — Essay on the Function of Technique. 
 
 ELOCUTION TEACHERS, ARTIFICIALITY OF {see also TEACHER). 
 
 Occasionally, one meets candidates for such positions 
 who articulate with such pedantic precision that he feels 
 like shaking them to see if teeth and tongue, which appear 
 to have cut connection with head and heart, cannot actually 
 drop out. There are others who emphasize with so much 
 artificiality that the chief impression conveyed comes from 
 the dexterity with which subordinate words and clauses are 
 kept dancing up and down, as if intent to assume an impor- 
 tance that will keep the main sense in the background. — 
 Essay on Elocution in the Theological Seminary. 
 
 ELOCUTION, WHEN TOO PICTURESQUE. 
 
 A word, too, might be added with reference to the fault 
 of making elocution too picturesque; of confounding re- 
 
114 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 presentation in action with painting. As we all know, in 
 connection with expression in language, only a moderate 
 degree of action is natural. To overstep the boundary of 
 moderation in this regard is to transgress those limits where 
 the dignity of appropriate characterization passes into the 
 ludicrousness of incongruous caricature, — a result that we 
 may laugh with in comedy, but can only laugh at in 
 a serious performance. — The Representative Significance 
 of Form, xxvi. 
 
 elocutionary vs. musical motive {see oratory vs. 
 conversation). 
 In correct elocutionary delivery, every sound represents 
 a definite thought. In music, not every sound but every 
 series of sounds represents, and, even then, it does not 
 represent a definite thought but an indefinite emotive 
 tendency of thought. The musical motive is manifested 
 in elocution, when the speaker begins to be influenced by 
 the general drift of the words rather than by the particular 
 thought behind each word. He is more apt to be influ- 
 enced thus when he is reading from a manuscript than when 
 he is speaking without one. When the eye is attending to 
 phrases instead of individual words the mind is apt to be 
 thinking of the phrase. As a consequence, there begin to 
 be regularly recurring series of slow or rapid upward and 
 downward utterances, irrespective of the emphasis appro- 
 priate for particular words, which, when a man is thinking 
 of them, he always gives. This makes the result of elocu- 
 tion resemble that of music. Music either puts our 
 thinking powers to sleep, as if the rhythm had a sort of 
 hypnotic influence, or else it sets us to thinking not of 
 anything in particular but of many things in general, the 
 drift only of which need be in analogy with that which 
 is being heard. And this is just what is done by a sermon 
 delivered with the musical motive, no matter how sweet 
 the voice or correct the enunciation. It either puts peo- 
 ple to sleep, or makes them think of something having 
 nothing to do with the discourse. Indeed, however they 
 may try to follow the line of its thought they have hard 
 work in doing so, the legitimate effect of the delivery 
 being to incline them away from it. One's feet might al- 
 most as well attempt, without slipping off, to follow a line 
 of cracks along the side of a steep roof covered with ice. 
 — Idem, xxvi. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 115 
 
 EMOTION, AS INFLUENCING ART-EXPRESSION. 
 
 The works of the lesser or occasional artists are produced 
 amid excitement which at intervals avails in all to paralyze 
 the logical powers and to stimulate the analogical. But 
 when, as in the greater artists, such phases of emotion are 
 the rule and not the exception; when they are constant, 
 when the man by nature is subjected to them and habitually 
 views things in an artistic light, and that, too, although not 
 greatly influenced by external causes, then the experience 
 must be attributed mainly to temperament. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 Thought in its very essence is comparison. The artistic 
 state in which the tendency to use comparisons is in the 
 intensest exercise, may be the state in which there is the 
 in tensest exercise of thought. What though this thought 
 may be impelled by an excited rather than by a quiescent 
 condition of emotion? Does this change its essential 
 character? As a fact, do artists show less thought in what 
 they furnish us than do scientists? Are not the spirits of 
 the great artists, as of the prophets, notwithstanding all 
 their quickness and intuitiveness of perception and expres- 
 sion, subject to their rational minds? Dante and Raphael, 
 — were their works inspired by an absence of intellection? 
 Leonardo and Goethe, — were they not wellnigh as accurate 
 in their regard for the laws of science as of art? — Idem, xiii. 
 
 The emotion possessed by the artist, it was said, moves 
 his thought with so much speed that he is unconscious of 
 the different phases through which it passes before reaching 
 its conclusions. With little emotion, with all the thoughts 
 advancing at slow pace, the scientist is conscious of almost 
 every step. But when circumstances so affect one that, 
 owing to some limit in his means or time for consideration, 
 he must arrive at his conclusions in haste — circumstances 
 realized in the cases of all the members of a savage and 
 uncultivated race, and of children and of older persons in 
 the presence of exciting causes — then apprehension over- 
 balances comprehension, and the mind expresses what it 
 would according to the dictates of intuitive judgment 
 rather than of logical reasoning. These are the conditions, 
 as we have found, which give birth to art. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 EMOTIONS, AS THE SOURCE OF ART. 
 
 It is because of emotions succeeding one another too 
 rapidly to permit one's perceptions or expressions to flow 
 
ii6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 wholly in the channels of conscious thought that the artist's 
 mind works imaginatively with reference to the forms of 
 nature, and causes the minds of others to work similarly 
 with reference to the forms of art which are made similar 
 to those of nature. In other words, the imaginative ideality 
 embodied in art is due to thought as prompted by emotion. 
 But this is exactly what Lord Kames in his "Elements of 
 Criticism" says that sentiment is. — Idem, xv. 
 
 EMOTION, OR SOUL, AS RELATED TO INSTINCT AND REFLECTION 
 
 (see REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN EXTENSION). 
 
 Instinctive processes on the part of men are those which 
 are conducted according to unconscious methods, and are 
 analogous, for this reason, to the results of the promptings of 
 instinct in the lower animals. Applying this test to music 
 and poetry, we can perceive in what sense they may be 
 attributed to the instinctive tendency. The best melodies 
 and verses sing themselves into existence. The musician 
 or poet hardly knows how or whence they come. In pro- 
 ducing paintings, statues, and buildings, however, the mind 
 is more successful when it works reflectively, by which is 
 meant according to the conscious and calculating methods of 
 reason. A statue and a building are produced slowly and 
 with a clear conception of design. At the same time it is 
 important to remember that neither the instinctive nor the 
 reflective tendency alone is sufficient to bring all that there 
 is in a man to bear upon his product. . . . it is when the 
 results of reflection are added to those of instinct, or of 
 instinct to those of reflection; when, therefore, neither one 
 of these elements alone is present, but both together, — it is 
 then that we have in the product an illustration of what, in 
 distinction from either instinctive or reflective, we may term 
 an emotive influence. A man, for instance, may eat and 
 sleep like an animal, instinctively, or he may think and talk 
 reflectively, without giving any expression to what we mean 
 by emotion. But as soon as he thinks and talks in con- 
 nection with eating and sleeping, as is the case with a caterer 
 or upholsterer, an hotel keeper or a house- wife; or as soon 
 as his instincts prompt and accentuate his thinking and talk- 
 ing, as is the case with an actor or a good story-teller, then, 
 as a result of instinct made thoughtful, or of thought made 
 instinctive, he begins to manifest his emotive nature; and 
 the character of his emotion is represented by the degree in 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 117 
 
 which the one or the other of the two tendencies — instinct 
 or thought — is in excess. It may be interesting to point 
 out also that, according to ordinar}^ conceptions, the power 
 which blends or balances the instinctive or physical and the 
 reflective or mental, is the soul, holding body and mind 
 together, influencing and influenced by both; and also 
 that, according to ordinary conceptions, it is the same thing 
 to put emotion into expressions and to put soul into them. 
 Neither can be manifested in them unless they represent a 
 blended result both of nerve and of thought, of instinct and 
 of reflection. In accordance with this, it is evident that 
 music and poetry, which are naturally instinctive, come to 
 manifest soul in the degree in which they embody also, kept 
 of course in due subordination, something of the reflective; 
 and that the naturally reflective products of the other arts 
 acquire the same effect in the degree in which, in the same 
 way, they embody something of the instinctive. — Art in 
 Theory J xx. 
 
 EPIC, REALISTIC, AND DRAMATIC MOTIVES. 
 
 Suppose that one be moved to tell a story. That which 
 first prompts him to do so is some thought, usually a general 
 impression, which strikes him in connection with certain 
 transactions that he has witnessed or heard; and because 
 the impression remains, he tells the story in such a way as 
 to convey to his hearers an impression similar to his own. 
 His whole object in the recital, though he may not be con- 
 scious of it, is to make clear the impression, or, as we some- 
 times say, the morale the point that has interested him, and 
 so long as he does this he cares little about accuracy in all 
 the details. Now this is the condition requisite to the epic 
 form of art, and, as all of us will probably recognize, this is 
 the condition of the method most naturally adopted by those 
 who gain the reputation of being good story-tellers. There- 
 fore it seems appropriate that the Greeks, taking their term 
 from a word meaning story, should have named this form, 
 par excellence, the epic, or story-style. 
 
 But there is another way in which one may recall the 
 same transactions. After reflecting upon them a little, he 
 may begin to analyze the different deeds or words of the 
 person implicated, and to ask himself, Why did this one 
 do this or say that ? These reflections will lead him to think 
 more particularly of the details of the transactions and 
 
Ii8 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 sayings, and of each of them in the order of its occurrence. 
 When, after such a consideration, he comes to tell the story, 
 although possibly he may not neglect to bring out that which 
 at first seemed to him to be its "point," nevertheless this 
 will appear subordinate to the accuracy with which he re- 
 lates the details themselves and their interaction. In other 
 words, his desire to be true to the facts in their order of 
 sequence — i. e., to the scientific-artistic tendency — will 
 realize the condition requisite to what has been termed 
 realistic art; and, with reference to this, it is evident that 
 while such a mode of recital may render a story far less 
 interesting as a mere story, it will render it far more satis- 
 factory to a consideration purely intellectual and analytic. 
 
 Once more, there is a third way of telling the story. 
 After analyzing the different words and deeds of the per- 
 sons engaged in the transactions, a man may become con- 
 scious of forming definite conclusions with reference to the 
 motives and characters of these persons, and, as a result of 
 his conclusions, he may be joyous or otherwise, according 
 to the degree in which the events have pleased or grieved 
 him. At this stage, he will be prompted to express his 
 pleasure or grief; i. e., his emotions, and, while doing so, 
 in order to manifest his reasons and enforce their reasonable- 
 ness on others, he will be led instinctively to imitate the 
 expressions or appearances of the characters to whom he is 
 referring. This gives us the condition requisite to dramatic 
 art — from the word dramare, to act. In this form, the 
 story is told, not with supreme reference to the point or 
 moral, as in the epic, or to the details or facts, as in the realistic, 
 but to the effects produced upon thought or feeling, and to 
 the way in which they can be represented in action. — Essen- 
 tials of Msthetics, xi. 
 
 EPIC, REALISTIC AND DRAMATIC OUTLINES (see REPRESENTA- 
 TIVE EFFECTS IN NATURAL OUTLINES). 
 
 Now add to this observation with reference to the expres- 
 sion of outlines in material nature, another with reference 
 to the expression of thoughts or emotions in the human 
 form. Whenever these find vent under the predominating 
 influence of a subjective or instinctive prompting, corre- 
 sponding to the epic; in other words, whenever, wholly 
 from within, a man is inspired to rapture, enthusiasm, and 
 eloquence, either of a joyous or serious character, then his 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 119 
 
 gait, postures, gestures, and all the movements of his body, 
 in the degree in which his sentiment is able to find unim- 
 peded expression in his physical frame, will take the form of 
 free, large, graceful curves. But whenever his thoughts or 
 emotions find vent under a predominating influence of a 
 relative or reflective prompting corresponding to the 
 realistic — in other words, whenever he is actuated by a 
 desire, conscientious, self-conscious, and therefore more or 
 less constrained, to accommodate expression exactly to that 
 which it is to express, then his form will be erect, and his 
 gestures straight and stiff, and, so far as is necessary in order 
 to make them straight, angular. And once more, whenever 
 he is under a predominating influence of objective or emotive 
 promptings, corresponding to the dramatic — in other words, 
 whenever his chief impulse is to emphasize in the forms of 
 expression that which in view of outward circumstances 
 or consequences has stirred him profoundly, then the excite- 
 ment or passion either joyous or grievous, in the degree in 
 which it is effectively manifested, will double up his form, 
 throw out his chin, bend violently his elbows, knees, and 
 wrists, and make all his body a human representation of 
 the same sort of varied irregularity already described in 
 the forms of nature which have been said to represent the 
 same tendency. 
 
 There are reasons, therefore, founded both upon the 
 principle of association and upon methods of expression 
 pertaining to the very nature of our body, why the three 
 tendencies of form should find expression as has here been 
 indicated. — The Representative Significance of Form, xxi. 
 
 EXPLANATIONS OF ART-WORK {scC dlso INFORMATION and 
 
 literary). 
 To a work of art an explanation is much what canes are 
 to walking. Well used, they may increase the gracefulness 
 of impression conveyed by a man's gait. But this cannot 
 be graceful at all, unless he is able to walk without them. 
 So a picture cannot be all that a work of art should be, 
 unless, without one's knowing what the explanation is de- 
 signed to impart, the drawing and coloring can, in some 
 degree, at least, attract and satisfy assthetic interest. 
 Neither can a musical composition, unless it too, without 
 the aid of explanations, through the mere unfolding of 
 musical motives in a distinctively musical way, can afford, 
 
120 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 at least, some degree of assthetic delight. So far as an 
 explanation is intended to be used as a crutch instead of a 
 cane, the opponents of program music are justified. But 
 on the other hand, so long as a composer refrains from con- 
 ditioning upon his printed description such effects as are not 
 legitimate to it, there seems to be no good reason why he 
 should not share his confidences with his audiences, and let 
 them know what visible phenomena seemed represented by 
 his product when he was preparing it. In pursuing this 
 course, why is he not acting as strictly in accordance with 
 the principles of his art, as is the composer of an opera when 
 he indicates to his stage managers how to represent the 
 movements of his music through visible changes in scenery 
 and action? — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music: 
 Music as a Representative Art, vii. 
 
 EXPRESSION, ARTISTIC VS, ORDINARY {see ART FOR ART's 
 
 sake). 
 A man hums and talks, fulfilling an instinctive prompting 
 of his nature, in order to give vent to certain inward moods. 
 It is when something about the form in which he hums — 
 the movement, the tune — attracts his attention, and he 
 begins to experiment or play with it for its own sake, that 
 he begins to develop the possibilities of the musician. In 
 the same way, it is when something about the forms in which 
 a man talks — the metaphors, similes, sounds of the words — 
 attracts his attention and he begins to experiment with them 
 that he begins to develop the possibilities of the poet. So 
 with drawing, carving, and building. A man does more or 
 less of all of these, owing to an instinctive prompting within 
 him; but when something about the outlines, colors, and 
 materials that represent the conditions or relationships of 
 nature attracts his attention, so that he begins to experi- 
 ment with them — it is then that he begins to develop the 
 possibilities of the painter, the sculptor, or the architect. — 
 The Genesis of Art-Form, i. 
 
 EXPRESSION DEVELOPED FROM POSTURES AND GESTURES {sce 
 REPRESENTATION A CHARACTERISTIC OF ART). 
 
 How does a man express to sight what is passing in his 
 mind? Undoubtedly by his postures and the gestures of 
 his hands, feet, head, and countenance, and by these as we 
 see him when standing alone not only, but when surrounded 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 121 
 
 by other persons and things. Postures and gestures, 
 though never as definitely intelligible as the sounds of the 
 voice, are, nevertheless, in as true a sense natural forms of 
 communicating thought and feeling; and may be developed 
 into the subordinate art of pantomime, just as natural forms 
 of utterance in sound may be developed into the art of 
 speech. But pantomime is no more painting or sculpture 
 than speech is poetry. It is when a man becomes so at- 
 tracted and charmed by the methods through which he 
 naturally expresses thought in pantomime that he begins 
 to make an external product, embodying thought through 
 like methods, — it is then that he begins to work in the sphere 
 of the higher arts. Moreover, when he does this, he does 
 not pose with his own figure, as in dramatic representation, 
 but he makes other figures pose — that is to say, he draws, 
 colors, shapes, and combines the different parts of the figures 
 of other men, either alone, or in connection with their fellows 
 or with objects of nature animate or inanimate. Besides 
 this, too, very often without making use of any human 
 figures, he draws, colors, shapes, or combines other animate 
 or inanimate objects. It is for these reasons and in these 
 circumstances that he produces a work of painting or of 
 sculpture. In other words, instead of conveying a thought 
 or feeling through a posture of his own body, he conveys 
 it through representing a posture in a pictured man's body. 
 Or if his idea involve nothing that needs to be represented 
 by human figures ; if it be something that could be conveyed 
 by his pointing to animate or inanimate objects, were they 
 present in a certain location, then he leaves the human figure 
 out of his pictiure, and reproduces merely these objects. 
 . . . Paintings and statues are thus external products that 
 are embodiments of distinctively human methods of ex- 
 pression. But, besides this, notice how true it is that they 
 are not directed primarily toward ends of material utility. 
 The infinite pains taken with the lines, shadings, hues, and 
 modelings, that alone make them works of art, cannot be 
 explained on any other supposition than that they are 
 owing to the satisfaction which a man takes in developing 
 the forms for the sake of their own intrinsic beauty, wholly 
 aside from any desire to make them convey clear intelligence 
 of that which they express. This could usually be conveyed 
 equally well by the rude outlines of hieroglyphics. — Art in 
 Theory, viii. 
 
122 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 EXPRESSION FOR EXPRESSION'S SAKE {sce olso ART FOR 
 
 art's sake, and personality as represented). 
 
 All expression, in order to be what it is, in order to con- 
 \e,Y audible and visible information of inaudible and invisi- 
 ble thought and feeling, necessitates a use of the sights and 
 sounds furnished by nature. Only art emphasizes this use 
 of them. Notice that, in doing so, art does not emphasize 
 the thought and feeling in themselves. . . . What art 
 emphasizes is the use that by way of development is made 
 of the factors of expression. What music emphasizes, for 
 instance, grows out of the possibilities of rhythm, melody, 
 and harmony in sound; what poetry emphasizes, grows out 
 of the possibilities of rhythm, figurative language, descrip- 
 tion, and characterization; what painting and sculpture 
 emphasize, grows out of the possibilities of outline, color, 
 pose, and situation ; what architecture emphasizes, grows out 
 of the possibilities of support, shelter, strength, and eleva- 
 tion. . . . But what interest has the artist in manifesting, 
 or the world in knowing, that certain forms of nature are 
 factors used for the purpose of expression by a mind behind 
 them? What interest has a man in manifesting, or the 
 world in knowing, that behind any appearances of nature 
 there is a mind? He who can answer this, will find a reason 
 for the interest that men take in art, either as producers or as 
 patrons. ... 
 
 But are there any problems of life of interest so profound 
 as those which have to do with the relations of mind to 
 matter ? Is it not enough to say that mortals conscious of a 
 spirit in them struggling for expression, feel that they are 
 doing what becomes them when they give this spirit vent, 
 and with care for every detail, elaborate the forms in which 
 they give it this? What are men doing when thus moved 
 but objectifying their inward processes of mind; but 
 organizing with something of their own intelligence, but 
 animating with something of their own soul, the scattered 
 and lifeless forms that are about them, and infusing into 
 their product something of the same spirit that is the source 
 of all that they most highly prize within their own material 
 bodies. — Idem, v. 
 
 Art, while traceable to that which, in one sphere, is a 
 play-motive, and while produced with an aim irrespective 
 of any consideration of material utility, nevertheless often 
 springs from mental and spiritual activity of the most dis- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 123 
 
 tinctive kind, and results in the greatest possible benefit to 
 the race. What though a product does exist for expression's 
 sake alone? A being with a mind and spirit perpetually 
 evolving thought and feeling possesses that which, for its 
 own sake, ought to be expressed. Beyond his material 
 surroundings and interests, there exists for him a realm in 
 which excess of mental and spiritual force may be directed 
 toward the production of veritable works of art; and the 
 effects of these upon mental and spiritual development may 
 be infinitely more important than all possible energy that 
 could expend itself in seeking "what shall we eat, or what 
 shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed. " — Idem, 
 
 VII. 
 
 If in the world that we call real, our spirits be in prison, 
 then in the world ideal of art in which the spirit freely con- 
 jures forms at will, there may be an actual and not a fancied 
 exercise of that which men in general, not knowing why, 
 but following, as so often, an unerring instinct, have agreed 
 to call "the faculty divine." At least, with all the possi- 
 bilities suggested, if not indicated, by the facts that are be- 
 yond dispute, we certainly have no necessity for asking why 
 the aim of art should be to represent, though only for the 
 sake of representing, these reciprocal effects of nature upon 
 the mind and of the mind upon nature, with which we have 
 found it to be occupied. — /Jew, v. 
 
 EXPRESSION, ITS MEANING. 
 
 No one thinks of objecting to applying to the higher arts, 
 as is so frequently done, the phrase "arts of expression," 
 which term expression, as will be recognized, indicates always 
 the general result when a man's invisible or inaudible 
 thoughts or emotions are represented visibly or audibly in 
 deeds or tones. As thus understood, expression involves 
 effects produced both by the mind, which is the source of 
 the conception embodied, and by the body — the voice, 
 hands, whatever they may be, that constitute the agencies 
 through which the conception is made to pass into form. — 
 The Representative Significance of Form, xiii. 
 
 EXPRESSION, ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 The principles of expression which we teach, — what are 
 they but those which best interpret that which is most 
 important in humanity, and not in it alone, but in all the 
 audible and visible forms of the universe, from which it is 
 
124 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 possible for humanity to derive wisdom and guidance? — 
 Essay on the Function of Technique. 
 
 EXPRESSION, ITS TRUTHFULNESS DEPENDENT ON ITS FORM. 
 
 It is common with the English to fancy that if one have 
 only something to express, he need not trouble himself 
 about the form of expression. So, when they wish to 
 express heartiness of welcome, they imitate the actions of 
 men shaking hands with ladies holding up heavy trains 
 on their arms, — actions necessarily suggestive of a pretence 
 of having artificial habits acquired at court, and, by con- 
 sequence, just as necessarily incapable, in the remotest 
 degree, of suggesting anything even of the nature of hearti- 
 ness. — Idem. 
 
 EXPRESSION, TEACHERS OF. 
 
 The majority of the great teachers, whose names have 
 come down to us from antiquity, like Aristotle, Ga- 
 maliel, Quintilian, were teachers of expression, some of 
 them, like the last-named, distinctively teachers of elocu- 
 tion. — Idem. 
 
 FADS IN ART. 
 
 Let any one glance at the illustrations in the new' English 
 magazine, ** The Yellow Book " ; and then in humiliation read 
 over the names of hitherto reputable authors who have been 
 beguiled into allowing their writings to be printed between 
 the covers of a periodical started for the purpose of making 
 such illustrations popular. We are told that these are 
 specimens of a new style of art. In reality, they are speci- 
 mens of a style of no art whatever, if by the term we mean 
 that which is art in the highest sense; and this for the very 
 evident reason, which those who have followed the lines 
 of thought in this so-called unpractical series of essays, 
 will at once recognize, namely, that it is not their aim to 
 represent either mental conceptions or natural appearances. 
 The fad which they exemplify furnishes merely one more 
 of many inane manifestations of Anglo-Saxon affectation, 
 the same trait, exhibiting the same inability to perceive 
 the essentially ethic as well as aesthetic connection between 
 a thing to be expressed and a representative method of 
 expressing it which, for years, has made two whole nations 
 speak inarticulately and spell irregularly, and, to-day, is 
 making so many wear monocles, carry canes dirt-end up- 
 
 *This was first printed in 1895. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 125 
 
 ward, and shake hands as if, forsooth, they could not get 
 over habits acquired in clasping the fingers of court ladies 
 holding on their arms heavy trains at the queen's recep- 
 tions. There is no more art in what the draftsmen of this 
 "Yellow Book" suppose to indicate it than there is heart 
 in what so many of their patrons now suppose to indicate 
 a hearty welcome. — Paintings Sculpture, and Architecture 
 as Representative Arts, xii. 
 
 FAMILIAR, ART AS RELATED TO THE. 
 
 The mere fact that the discoveries of science are treated 
 like familiar subjects is not an argument against the artistic 
 quality of the work containing them. Nevertheless, as this 
 quality can be recognized by those alone to whom such 
 subjects are really familiar, the fact may be an argument, 
 and a strong one, against the expediency of introducing 
 them at the expense of necessarily limiting the number of 
 those to whom the work will prove artistically interesting. — 
 The Representative Significance of Form, viii. 
 
 FASHION PREVAILING, DISREGARDED IN ART. 
 
 Nor is the taste of any age, however it may stimulate 
 ability or aspiration to produce, above the sway of fashions, 
 good and bad, that, in proportion as they keep truth fettered, 
 render excellence impossible. In order to attain this, the 
 leader in art, as in religion, must break away from them, 
 in fact from all the shackles of conventional traditionalism-— 
 one might almost say of historic criticism, broadly beneficial 
 as this has been in many a direction, — and, searching back 
 of them, must find within himself and in the world about 
 him those first principles that underlie the nature of both 
 thoughts and things. — The Genesis of Art Form, Preface. 
 
 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, WHEN APPROPRIATE (see ILLUSTRA- 
 TIONS, LANGUAGE PLAIN AND FIGURATIVE, POETRY — ITS 
 LANGUAGE VS. PROSE, and REPRESENTATION IN SENTENCES). 
 
 He (the poet) will be impelled to use figures whenever, for 
 any reason, he feels that plain language will not serve his 
 purpose. Two circumstances, inclusive, in a broad way, 
 of many others, will justify him, as we can see, in having 
 this feeling: first, one in which the impression to be con- 
 veyed is very great or complex in its nature. Very often, in 
 these circumstances, plain direct representation might not 
 only fail to do justice to the subject, but might positively 
 misrepresent it. Milton wished to convey an impression 
 
126 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 of the size and power of Satan. It would scarcely have 
 been possible for him to do this adequately without mak- 
 ing his representation i//w5/ra/^Vg. . . . The second circum- 
 stance that justifies a writer in feeling that he must not 
 use direct representation is this: — not the fact that the 
 impression to be conveyed is too great or complex to be 
 represented truthfully in this manner, but just the opposite: 
 — the fact that it is too small and simple to be represented 
 adequately in this manner. When the scene to be described 
 is one that in itself is fitted to awaken the deepest and grand- 
 est feelings and thoughts, then, as in the concluding para- 
 graph of '* Paradise Lost," given a few pages back, direct 
 representation is all that is needed. Wherever, in fact, the 
 ideas to be presented are sublime or pathetic in themselves, 
 the one thing necessary is that the reader should realize them 
 as they are; and any indirectness in the style rather hinders 
 than furthers this. . . . Indeed, the main reason for the 
 large preponderance of direct over illustrative representa- 
 tion in the works of Homer and of the Greek tragedians, is 
 undoubtedly this, — that most of the persons and actions of 
 which they treated were heroic in their nature. They 
 needed only to be represented as they were, in order to 
 awaken admiration. It is the boast of our modern times, 
 however, that we have learned to take an interest in com- 
 mon men and actions. The poet feels that he misses that 
 which perhaps is noblest in his mission if he fails to help 
 the humblest of his fellows, physically, mentally, socially, 
 morally, and spiritually, by doing his best to lead them into 
 better conditions. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xxiii. 
 
 FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ART {see olso ART AS MENTAL, 
 ART EXPRESSING THOUGHT, SIGNIFICANCE and TECHNIQUE). 
 
 The term Jorm, derived from the Latin word forma ^ 
 meaning an appearance, refers, primarily, to anything 
 that can be perceived by the senses, and, in the higher 
 arts, for reasons given on page 8, by one of two senses, 
 — that of hearing or of seeing. But, besides this, the 
 term has a secondary and metaphorical meaning; it refers 
 to any conception the whole and the parts of which appeal 
 to the imagination — i, e., the imagining power of the 
 mind — in a clearly articulated, distinctly outlined, or 
 graphic way, so that one may liken the conception to a 
 thing that the senses can perceive. This is the use of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 127 
 
 the word which justifies one in speaking of the form of an 
 oration or a drama, or of a storm-scene or a battle-scene, 
 which latter he may have only in mind without any inten- 
 tion of ever actually putting it into the form of a picture. 
 
 The term significance refers to that which is supposed 
 to be indicated to the mind through the form. Sometimes 
 the form indicates this on account of what it is in itself, 
 as when the picture of a man looking intently at an object 
 makes us think that he is studying it. But sometimes 
 the form in itself has nothing to do with the significance, 
 which it only suggests by way of association. For instance, 
 in certain circumstances, by hanging out a national flag, 
 or by wearing the national colors, we may manifest our 
 patriotism. The flags and colors are the forms through 
 which, because men can see them, we indicate the patriotism 
 which men cannot see. The flags and colours are the signals, 
 the patriotism is the thing signified, or the significance. 
 This illustration will indicate what is meant in art by form 
 and by the significance expressed through the form. Very 
 many forms which an artist can use inevitably suggest — on 
 account of what they are in themselves, or of their associa- 
 tions — one conception and no other. Therefore, in reproduc- 
 ing them, the artist must treat them not as mere forms, 
 but as forms which, by way of nature or of ordinary use, 
 have a definite meaning. If, for instance, we ask a sculptor 
 who has tried to represent a certain character, why a hand 
 has been moulded so as to produce a gesture with the palm 
 up instead of down, he cannot give a satisfactory answer 
 by saying that he has moulded it thus for the sake merely of 
 the form, in case he mean to use this word as indicating an 
 appearance. On£ gesture, if well made, may appear as well as 
 another. The mfference between the two is wholly a differ- 
 ence of meaning, of significance. — Essentials of ^sthteics, v. 
 
 This fact is exemplified in all the arts ; and it is that which 
 makes an art-product, as distinguished from a scientific, 
 a combined effect of both form and significance — of form, 
 inasmuch as it fulfils certain physical laws of harmony 
 or proportion, which make the effect agreeable or attrac- 
 tive to the physical eyes or ears; and of significance, inas- 
 much as it fulfils certain psychical laws, as of association 
 or adaptability, which cause it to symbolize some particular 
 thought or emotion. — Art in Theory ^ Introduction. 
 
128 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 Goethe once said that his poetry had been a continual 
 confession. Suppose that it had been merely a confession. 
 Would this alone have made him the greatest poet of his 
 time? To become such, did he not need, besides thinking 
 of the significance of that which he was to say, to think 
 also of the form in which he was to say it ? And was not the 
 significance one thing, and the form — the versification, 
 or the unity of the plot — another thing? And might he 
 not have paid attention to the one, and not to the other? 
 Most certainly he might. But if he had he would never 
 have ranked where he does — with Dante and Shakespeare. 
 So in painting and sculpture. The figures of Benjamin 
 West and Julius Schnorr are arranged more effectively 
 than many a most spectacularly significant climax in a 
 drama; those of Balthasar Denner and Florent Willems 
 manifest the most scrupulous regard for the requirements 
 of line and color. Yet because exclusive attention to 
 either significance or form led all of them to neglect one 
 of the two, they never can rank with artists of which this 
 was not true — Raphael, Titian, and Rubens. — Essentials of 
 Esthetics, V. 
 
 Do those who hold that the subject of art can be "any- 
 thing, " continue to hold on to their belief in the necessity 
 of a strictly artistic treatment of this? — or do their fol- 
 lowers? It may be a new suggestion, but the plain truth 
 is that usually they do not, and this because they cannot. 
 If it be a law, as is maintained in "Art in Theory," that 
 an artist, to be successful in his work, must always keep 
 his thought upon two things, — form in itself, and signifi- 
 cance in the form, — then he cannot think of only one of 
 these without doing injury to both. He is like a man in 
 a circus, riding two horses. The moment that he neglects 
 one of them, it shies off from him; and, when he leans 
 to recover his control of this, he finds himself balanced 
 away from the other. Very soon, unless he wish to keep 
 up a jumping exhibition, for which his audience have 
 not paid, he will either ride no horse at all, or only one, 
 and this is as likely as otherwise to be the very one that 
 he at first neglected. So in art: unless a man preserve the 
 equilibrium between the requirements of form and of 
 significance, no one can tell which of the two will finally 
 appeal to him more strongly. Significance of some sort, 
 
Poutou Temple, Ningpo, China 
 See pages p, 12, 73, 81-85, 89, qi. 147, 148, 162, 223-225, 301, 385 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 129 
 
 for instance, to apply this to the case before us, is eternally 
 present in art, no matter what one's theory may be con- 
 cerning it. For this reason, when men have begun to 
 think that the subject of art may be "anything," so long 
 as the form is artistic, some of them, as just noticed, will 
 soon begin to think that it may be "anything but what it 
 should be." Before long, too, they will come to suppose 
 — just as people come to admire most the disagreeable 
 eccentricities of those whom they accept as leaders — that 
 the art is all the better for having as a subject "anything 
 but what it should be. " Does this result appear improba- 
 ble? Recall the almost universal comment of the art- 
 editors in our country upon the rejection of the nude male 
 figure prepared for the medal of the Columbian exhibition. 
 The comment — probably true enough in itself — was that 
 the authorities at Washington did not "understand" or 
 "appreciate art." But think of any one's imagining that 
 this fact was proved by this particular action? — as if the 
 statues of our statesmen in the old Hall of Representatives 
 in the Capitol could not be specimens of art unless all their 
 pantaloons were chiselled off! — as if appropriateness of 
 subject and of treatment had nothing to do with art in 
 them or in this medal! — as if by reproducing, however 
 successfully, a form representative of Greek life, we could 
 atone, in a distinctively American medal, for misrepre- 
 senting American life! — as if, in short, there were not a 
 large number of other considerations far more important 
 as proving the possession of aesthetic appreciation than 
 the acceptance of a subject which, when exhibited in an 
 advertisement, would inevitably be deemed by hundreds 
 of thousands of our countrymen "anything but what it 
 should be!" How long would it take a condition of art- 
 appreciation, of which such a criterion were the test, to 
 fill our public parks with imitated Venuses and Apollos, 
 meaningless to our people except as reminders of the 
 reigning beauties of else forgotten "living pictures"? 
 What would be the effect upon our growing youth, were 
 the thoughts excited by such productions to be substi- 
 tuted for the nobler and purer inspiration of works like 
 St. Gaudens* "Farragut," or McMonnies' recently erected 
 "Nathan Hale"? 
 
 The influence upon sculpture of this supposition that a 
 subject of art may be "anything, " has not yet, fortunately, 
 
130 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 in our country, been fully revealed. But the same can- 
 not be said with reference to poetry. There are plenty 
 of people among us, neither vicious nor morbid in their 
 tastes, who, nevertheless, are inclined to fancy that, con- 
 sidered aesthetically, a shady theme is not only excusa- 
 ble but desirable, when furnishing a background from 
 which to project into relief a brilliancy of treatment. 
 Therefore, for his brilliancy, they accepted Swinburne 
 when he first appeared; and to-day, though far less brilliant, 
 they have taken up with Ibsen. How would it be, accus- 
 tomed as they are now to these morbid themes, were 
 another Ibsen to appear, an Ibsen so far as concerned his 
 subjects, but without the present Ibsen's dramatizing 
 skill? Would he, too, though destitute of the elements 
 of form which once their school considered the essential 
 test of art, — would he, too, be accepted as a foremost poet 
 or dramatist? Strange as it may seem, he certainly would. 
 Most of the service of praise to Whitman in the Madison 
 Square Theatre in New York, some ten years ago, was 
 piped by our little metropolitan singers, whose highest 
 ideal of a poet had been Swinburne, and whose most 
 vehement artistic energy had hitherto expended itself 
 almost entirely upon dainty turns of melody in rondeaus 
 and villanelles. The result merely verified an old well- 
 known principle. Extremes meet. The apotheosis of 
 form, when the smoke of the incense clears away, reveals, 
 enthroned on high, a Whitman; and not in any of Whit- 
 man's works is there even a suggestion of that kind of 
 excellence in form, which once his worshippers supposed 
 to furnish the only standard of poetic merit. 
 
 Precisely the same principle is exemplified in painting, 
 too. When an artist starts out with an idea that the sub- 
 ject of art may be " anything, " of course he begins to develop 
 the form for its own sake. He has nothing else to do. 
 But form may mean many different things. With some, 
 it means the imitation of natural outlines or colors. With 
 some, it hardly means imitation at all. It means the 
 development of color according to the laws of harmony. 
 Even where the subject of art is a person, even in portraiture, 
 there are critics who tell us that the result should not be 
 judged by its likeness to the person depicted. It is not a 
 photograph, forsooth. It is a painting, to be judged by the 
 paint, they say, and mean, apparently, by the color, irre- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 131 
 
 spective of its appearance in the face portrayed. Of course, 
 this supposition will be deemed by some unwarranted. 
 Few would second it, made thus baldly. But we must 
 judge of beliefs by practices ; and scarcely an art-exhibition 
 in New York fails to show some portraits on the walls — nor 
 the ones least praised — in which those slight variations of 
 hue which every careful observer recognizes to be essential 
 to the effects of life in the human countenance, are so 
 exaggerated for the sake of mere effects of color that faces 
 in robust health are made to look exactly as if breaking out 
 with the measles; or, not infrequently, as if the victim had 
 had the disease, and died of it. Thus in painting as in 
 poetry, and the same fact might be exemplified in all the 
 arts, exclusive attention to form, — the conception that art 
 is the application of its laws to "anything" — may lead in the 
 end, and very swiftly too, to the destruction not only of all 
 in art that is inspiring to the soul, but even of that which is 
 pleasing to the senses. A law of art-form is worth nothing 
 except as it is applied to forms that have worth; and that 
 which gives them worth is not by any means synonymous 
 with that which makes them "anything." — Rhythm and 
 Harmony in Poetry and Music, Preface. 
 
 This fact, that certain characteristics of art are wellnigh 
 entirely dependent upon form considered as significant, 
 while certain others are equally dependent on form con- 
 sidered merely in itself, makes the tasks both of the art 
 producer and of the art-critic peculiarly difficult. To 
 neglect the requirements of significance is to disregard 
 the soul of art, that which is the very substance of its 
 life; and to neglect the requirements of form is to disregard 
 its body, that which is essential to its artistic effective- 
 ness. — Idem: Introduction to Music as a Representative Art, 
 
 Do I mean to say, therefore, that every artist, when com- 
 posing, must consciously think of significance and also 
 of form? Not necessarily. Many a child unconsciously 
 gestures in a form exactly indicative of his meaning. But 
 often, owing to acquired inflexibilit}^ or unnaturalness, the 
 same person, when grown, unconsciously gestures in a form 
 not indicative of his meaning. What then? If he wish to 
 be an actor, he must study the art of gesture, and for a 
 time, at least, must produce the right gestures consciously. 
 And besides this, whether he produce them consciously or 
 
132 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 unconsciously, in the degree in which he is an artist in the 
 best sense, he will know what form he is using, and why he is 
 using it. The fact is that the human mind is incapable of 
 taking in any form without being informed of something 
 by it; and it is the business of intelligent, not to say honest, 
 art to see to it that the information conveyed is not false, 
 that the thing made corresponds to the thing meant. 
 — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 It might be inferred from what has been said that the 
 requirements of form and of significance are essentially 
 different. Indeed, many artists and critics, apparently, 
 imagine that, in order to do justice to one of the two, 
 they must subordinate the other or neglect it altogether. 
 This supposition has led to two schools of art, the one 
 grounding it, primarily, upon imitation, the other upon 
 the communication of thought and emotion. But why 
 should there be these two schools? A man usually imi- 
 tates a form because he has had some thought or feeling 
 in connection with its appearance, — in other words, be- 
 cause it has suggested something to him, because it has 
 had for him some significance. The very existence of 
 art-form, therefore, involves the existence of significance. 
 Again, a man communicates thought and emotion through a 
 form because these, in the condition in which they exist in 
 the mind, cannot be heard or seen by others. They must be 
 expressed audibly or visibly; that is to say, in a form. The 
 existence of significance, therefore, if one would make it 
 known, involves the use of a form. — Essentials of Esthetics, 
 
 V. 
 
 FORM AND SPIRIT. 
 
 To determine aright the relations that should exist 
 between form and spirit is to solve the most important, 
 perhaps, of human problems. Ideally, of course, the one 
 should be a perfect expression of the other; but, in this 
 world, nothing is ideal or perfect ; and in nothing is the fact 
 more clearly exemplified than in the frequent failure of a 
 form to represent that which, apparently, it exists for the 
 sole purpose of representing. To recognize, and, so far as 
 possible, to remedy this condition, are primal obligations 
 of intelligence ; and this fact justifies the extensive treatment 
 of the subject which has characterized the literature of all 
 periods. — Introduction to "Cecil the Seer.'' 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 133 
 
 FORM, ARTISTIC AS DEVELOPED FROM NATURAL. 
 
 Unless a man could and did hum in this apparently use- 
 less way, it is not likely that any conception of musical art 
 could ever be suggested to him. At any rate, it is true as a 
 fact that it is never until something in connection with the 
 form in which he hums — the movement, the tune — attracts 
 his attention, charms him, seems beautiful to him, and he 
 begins to experiment or play with it for its own sake, 
 irrespective of any aim having to do with material utility, 
 that he begins to develop the possibilities of the musician. 
 In a precisely similar way, talking to oneself may be said 
 to be the underlying condition of poetry. When a man, 
 because interested in some ulterior object, is talking to 
 others, he has neither the time nor the inclination to think 
 of the form that he is using. It is only when something in 
 connection with the form — the metaphors, similes, sounds 
 of the syllables, or words — attracts his attention, charms 
 him, seems beautiful to him, and he begins to experiment or 
 play with it for its own sake — it is only then that he begins 
 to develop the possibilities of the poet. 
 
 A rude outline can convey all that is essential to suggest 
 to oneself or to others the idea of a horse. When a man, 
 simply to give vent to the excess of energy in his expressional 
 nature, delays over the outline, adding to what would be 
 necessary in hieroglyphic writing, for instance, limnings 
 and colors that make the representation more complete or 
 ornate, he is moved by the art-impulse. When again, 
 merely to give vent to this energy, besides shaping, he 
 shapes carefully, or ornaments clothing, knives, forks, or 
 other implements; and, still more, when he does all this in 
 connection with busts and statues, which, from their very 
 nature by imaging human forms and faces, are peculi- 
 arly adapted for the expression of human thought 
 and feeling, then again he is moved by this impulse. 
 Once more, when in constructing by way of combina- 
 tion any object, but especially a house with which we 
 always associate a human presence, he adds to it, above 
 what is necessary, pillars, porches, window-caps, corni- 
 ces, cupolas, and always in the degree in which these 
 are distinctly expressive of human sentiment — as in a 
 church, for instance, — then, too, he is influenced by the 
 art-impulse. It is almost superfluous to point out that, 
 in these three cases, respectively, we find the conditions 
 
134 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 leading to painting, sculpture, and architecture. — Art in 
 Theory y viii. 
 
 FORM, HUMAN {see ARTISTIC CONCEPTIONS, BEAUTY HUMAN, 
 
 PROPORTION IN HUMAN FORMS, REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS 
 
 IN GESTURES, and TASTE DISCREPANCIES). 
 
 FORM IN AN ART- WORK CONSIDERED AS A WHOLE. 
 
 When we have any conception to communicate to others, 
 we instinctively associate it with some sight or sound in the 
 external world. Otherwise, as thought itself is invisible 
 and inaudible, we might not be able to make them acquainted 
 with it. For instance, this term expression, just used, 
 means a pressing out, — an operation that can be affirmed 
 literally only of a material substance which is forcibly 
 expelled from another material substance; but, because we 
 recognize a possibility of comparison between this opera- 
 tion and the way in which immaterial thought is made to 
 leave the immaterial mind, we use the term as we do. So 
 with thousands of terms like understanding, uprightness, 
 clearness, muddled, etc. Carrying out the same principle, 
 the ancients represented whole sentences through the use of 
 hieroglyphics; and geometricians and scientists, even of our 
 own times, represent whole arguments — the logical relations 
 of abstract ideas and the physical relations of intangible 
 forces — through the use of lines and figures. In a similar 
 way and with a similar justification, we can apply the princi- 
 ple to the expression of thought in a subject considered 
 as a whole. . . Not merely, as judged by separate 
 illustrations, but by general arrangement, that oration or 
 poem is the most successful which presents the thought 
 in this depicted or graphic way, — a way that causes the 
 hearer or reader to seem to see all the lines of the argument 
 mapped out before him, the entire framework of the ideas 
 built up and standing in front of him. But before a speaker 
 or writer can produce such an effect, he himself must be 
 able to see his subject lying before him, or rising in front 
 of him; in other words, he must be able to conceive of it as 
 comparable to some external object whose shape or move- 
 ment can be perceived. — Essay on Art and Logical Form. 
 
 Almost all critics of all ages have felt it to be appropriate 
 to take an animal or a man, the highest type of an organized 
 being, as an ideal natural form from which to derive sug- 
 gestions with reference to the essential characteristics of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 135 
 
 an ideal art-form. Plato, for instance, named head, trunk, 
 and feet as the three essential features in every work of art ; 
 and Aristotle, recalling the fact that all products do not 
 appeal to the eye, and cannot seem to have visible bodies, 
 tried to state a principle more general in its reach by declar- 
 ing that they must all have beginning, middle, and end. 
 But both statements are virtually the same, and together 
 are inclusive of all possible artistic applications of the sub- 
 ject. The first applies literally to forms that appear in 
 space, the second to those that appear in time. Both mean 
 that there should be such an order in the arrangement of the 
 parts constituting the form as to cause all the parts to 
 seem to be organically connected with one whole, and this 
 whole to seem to possess all the parts necessary to render 
 it complete. — The Genesis of Art-Form, vi. 
 
 In arranging a number of objects or individuals to be 
 represented in the same picture, an artist will almost invari- 
 ably place the larger or more prominent in the centre or at 
 the top, thus giving the group a head; and the others on 
 either side or below, thus giving it a trunk and feet ; while he 
 will dispose of all the members in such ways that the con- 
 tour of the group, as outlined by all their forms together, 
 shall seem to have some shape — that suggesting a circle, an 
 arch, or a pyramid, as the case may be. 
 
 In architecture, the foundation corresponds to the foot, 
 the wall to the trunk, and the roof to the head. All these 
 features taken together may present effects of grouping 
 similar to those in painting and sculpture. The various 
 projections, gables, pediments, chimneys, domes, spires, 
 whatever they may be, that make up the wings and roofs, 
 may be arranged so that, taken together, they can be in- 
 scribed in a low or a high arch, rounded or sharpened like 
 a pyramid. As a rule, the greater the appearance of the 
 exercise of design in the organic arrangement of these 
 features, the more satisfactory are they to the eye that 
 looks to find in them the results of art. — Essentials of 
 Esthetics, XIV. 
 
 FORM IN ART NOT ALWAYS DETERMINED BY THE FORM IN 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 Our first conception would be that the sight or sound 
 perceived in nature would of itself indicate the forms in 
 which the thoughts or feelings awakened in connection with 
 
136 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 it should be reproduced in art. Such is sometimes the 
 case. It would always be the case, if art were a mere 
 imitation. But, whether imitative or not, art is also an 
 expression of thought and emotion, and, because it is so, the 
 form used must, at times, be subordinated to the require- 
 ments of that which is to be expressed. To illustrate this, 
 suppose a man to have listened to the story of a battle. It 
 might be presumed that a representation of what he has 
 heard would also assume the form of a story, and therefore 
 be artistically expressed in a poem. But often the effect of 
 the story upon his imagination, as also of his imagination 
 upon it, is such that what is experienced can be represented 
 truthfully only through a picture. Again, it happens some- 
 times that the forms through which the effects have been 
 exerted, have lingered so long in his mind, and experi- 
 enced so many modifications there that, though critical 
 analysis may detect, as in architecture and music, that 
 the effects produced have been suggested by forms in 
 nature, the artist himself is unconscious of what these 
 forms were. — Idem, ix. 
 
 FORM, STUDY OF, NEGLECTED BY ANGLO-SAXONS (see TECH- 
 NIQUE). 
 
 Misunderstanding of the relations to expression of techni- 
 que and consequent suspicion of it, is common in our own 
 country. I sometimes think that it is constitutional with 
 us. Certainly no race manifests such possibilities of error 
 in this direction as does the Anglo-Saxon. Many of us 
 have apparently become so accustomed to see a form used 
 to express a mental condition diametrically the opposite of 
 that which it should express, that we have ceased to recog- 
 nize any necessity of having the one correlated to the other. 
 Is there any other race among whom an ideal hero is a man 
 like Rochester in "Jane Eyre, " Bertie in ''The Henrietta, " 
 or the "Disagreeable Man" in "Ships that Pass in the 
 Night" — a man whose exterior exactly misrepresents his in- 
 terior? Is it a wonder, either, that this nonconformity of the 
 ideal to the real in actual life should influence conceptions 
 of art? An Italian or a Frenchman with a voice natu- 
 rally melodious, a frame naturally graceful, and both natu- 
 rally flexible, seems to believe instinctively that the form 
 of expression should be, and can be, conformed to that which 
 is behind it; and he seldom thinks of appearing in public 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 137 
 
 until he has studied sufficiently to secure this result. But 
 an Englishman or an American who, as a rule, has by nature 
 either an inarticulate drawl or a nasal twang, and an awk- 
 wardness not only unthinking but unthinkable, he, for- 
 sooth, must hold a theory that any study of elocutionary 
 technique is unnecessary! — Essay on the Function of 
 Technique. 
 
 FORM VS SIGNIFICANCE IN ART {see SIGNIFICANCE VS. FORM). 
 
 Go to critics of literature who believe that art is "the 
 application to anything" of the laws of art-form — which, 
 for reasons given on page 235, is a strictly just way of 
 shortening what is meant by the exceedingly loose use of 
 the term proportion in the above definition — and ask them 
 who is the first English poet of the age. They will probably 
 answer — and few would differ from them — Swinburne. 
 Now ask them what is the influence upon life of the thought 
 presented in his poetry, what is the particular phase of 
 inspiration to be derived from it; and they will probably 
 answer that to them as critics this is immaterial ; that not the 
 thoughts of the poet, not his subjects give him his rank, but 
 his manner of presenting them, his style, the rhythm of his 
 verse, and its harmony as produced by alliteration, asso- 
 nance, or rhyme. Again, ask a critic of painting of the same 
 school to show you the best picture in a gallery. He is as 
 likely as not to point you to the figtire of a woman, too lightly 
 clothed, posing not too unconsciously near some water; or, 
 too heavily clothed, sitting in front of a mirror. You ask 
 him what is the peculiar phase of thought expressed in this 
 picture, the particular inspiration for life to be derived from 
 it; and he will look at you and laugh. Nothing to-day, in 
 our country, is supposed to show more ignorance about 
 art, than the conception that interest in a picture has any- 
 thing to do with a subject, or with its suggesting a story, 
 whether inspiring or otherwise. We must judge of the 
 picture, we are told, entirely by the form, the style, the 
 use in it of light and shade and color. 
 
 But, you say, there certainly was a time when theories 
 of art were different. Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, yes, 
 and Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller too, — all these had 
 style or form, yet what one thinks of chiefly, when he 
 reads them, is not this, but the thought that is behind it. 
 Then there is Raphael. On a Sunday, one could sit for 
 
138 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 an hour before the Sistine Madonna, and feel more bene- 
 fited than in most of the churches. But Raphael's is not 
 a name, you find, with which to charm the modern critic. 
 You are told that you are behind the age. This state- 
 ment gives you a new suggestion, and you proceed to 
 apply it. You ask yourself if you are also behind the age 
 in your conceptions of literary art. You take up the 
 nearest periodical and read the poetry in it, and its criti- 
 cisms upon poetry. What are the new poets doing? 
 What is it in their work that excites praise ? The thought ? 
 — its breadth of conception? its completeness of develop- 
 ment? its power of expressing truth fitted to uplift spiritu- 
 ally? How often do we see, in an American criticism, any- 
 thing like an analysis of a new American poem ? How often 
 do we see an effort to bring to light the subtle character of 
 the philosophy of which it is the expression? And there is 
 the kindliest of reasons why these are not seen. A suggestion 
 of logical arrangement, as in Dante or Milton, a hint of 
 ethical maxims, though set as brilliantly as in Shakespeare or 
 Schiller, would give a poet of our own day, were he com- 
 mended for these particularly, a hard tramp up the road to 
 recognition. What our people want is style, form. * ' Yes, ' * 
 say the critics, "but imaginative form. You can't object 
 to that." Certainly one can — to imagination used for 
 mere form's sake. Imaginative form has value only when 
 it images a truth; and this is that which our modern critics 
 have forgotten. Any comparison, however odious, will 
 do for them, if it be only a comparison, and almost any 
 style if it only ring, even if as hollow as some of the French 
 forms of verse that our magazines admire so much. Not, of 
 course, that the style must always be as dainty as in these. 
 Some of us prefer to take it — as the English do their cheese 
 — strong, with plenty of light and shade, and if the former 
 be leprous and the latter smutty, so long as the effects are 
 anything but weak, our critics, especially of our religious 
 journals, are apt to like it all the better. The truth is that 
 the moment that, through an overbalancing regard for form, 
 people come to think that it alone has value, and that the 
 subject in art is immaterial, they are in a fair way to become 
 realists in that very worst sense in which it means believers 
 in the portrayal in art of any amount of ugliness or nastiness 
 so long as it be only that which they term "true to nature. '* 
 This is the belief which, at present, is uppermost in France, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 139 
 
 brought about in that country by the predominating 
 influence, through more than one century, of a materialistic 
 art-philosophy. . . . And this French attitude of mind 
 toward art, — art which some believe to be the handmaid of 
 civilization and religion, and the most powerfully elevating 
 of any purely human influence; — this attitude of mind and 
 this direction toward high achievement in art, is that to 
 which almost all those potent in criticism in our country, 
 to-day, are doing their utmost to point our own people. — 
 Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, Preface. 
 
 FORM vs. SIGNIFICANCE IN MUSIC. 
 
 And so with music. The difference between a melody 
 of Offenbach and the least successful recitative-work of 
 Wagner is the difference between treating musical form as 
 if it were wholly a matter of form, and as if it were wholly 
 a matter of significance. The difference between both and 
 the best music of Wagner, and of Mozart, Beethoven, and 
 Sullivan, too, is that in this latter the equilibrium between 
 the two tendencies in art is maintained. — Idem, Introduction 
 to Music as a Representative Art. 
 
 FORM, WHY ART ORIGINATES IT. 
 
 Art is a development of the earliest endeavor of men to 
 give form to thought for which they have no form at 
 their command. It is not at the command of the savage 
 or of the child, simply because no form appropriate has 
 come, as yet, within the very limited range of his experience 
 or information. It is not always at the command of the 
 cultivated man, because, often, all forms with which he is 
 acquainted seem to be inadequate. Accordingly the 
 uncultivated and the cultivated alike are impelled to origi- 
 nate expressions for themselves. In doing this, they are 
 obliged to interpret nature in a certain way. They must 
 think about that which they have observed, and before they 
 have had time to examine it critically, through the exercise 
 of their conscious powers, they must judge of it instinctively 
 through the exercise of their unconscious promptings. This 
 principle applies, not only to their use, for purposes of expres- 
 sion, of imaginative words and imitative drawings, but to 
 their whole methods of conceiving of the material world. 
 The boy hears of a sailor or of a general, and for the very 
 reason that he has had no experience of the life led by either, 
 he imagines it, and the man in the same condition surmises 
 
I40 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 what might be the experience of a fairy or of a saint. — 
 Essentials of Esthetics, iii. 
 
 FORMS, IMPORTANCE OF INTERPRETING THEM IN ART AND 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 It is hoped that a few examples which, possibly, on second 
 thought, the author might explain, or the reader apprehend 
 differently, will not deter any from a serious consideration of 
 the principles themselves, the acceptance of which cannot 
 fail to have an important influence upon all one's views 
 either of art or of life. For, if true, they show that the 
 poems, symphonies, paintings, statues, and buildings pro- 
 duced by the artist differ from the elementary forms of these 
 produced before his appearance, mainly in the greater 
 degree in which he has learned to read through forms, 
 whether human or not, that which is in the soul of man and 
 of all things. For one who practises art or enjoys it, or 
 takes any interest in it whatever, though not beyond a 
 perception that it is about him and has come to stay; and 
 not only for such an one, but for all who live in a world 
 surrounded by appearances which could awaken infinitely 
 more interest, were it believed that every slightest feature of 
 them might be recognized to be definitely significant and 
 suggestive and, therefore, instructive and inspiring, — 
 this, certainly, is a conception of art and of life and of the 
 relations between them, which is worth holding. — Paintings 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, Preface. 
 
 FORMS, THINKING THROUGH USE OF. 
 
 Most of us are not aware of the extent to which we think 
 through this use of forms. We fancy that we think through 
 the use of words. So we do, but only so far as words have 
 been made arbitrarily to take the place of forms. We 
 think in dreams, do we not? In these, what are we doing 
 except thinking? Yet how many words do we seem to 
 hear in our dreams? The vast bulk of our experience then 
 appears to pass before consciousness in visible pictures. 
 The same may be affirmed of what occurs during our 
 reveries, though we seldom analyze these sufficiently to 
 discover the fact. — Essay on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 FORMULATION, NEEDED IN ALL INVENTION. 
 
 A principle or law which has never been applied in inven- 
 tion can have no existence until it has been given a form; 
 and it cannot be given a form until the image of it has been 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 141 
 
 conceived in the mind. Therefore, in order to be able to 
 invent, a mind must, first of all, be able to think in images. 
 This is the same as to say that an original product, before it 
 can become real, must be ideal, — in other words, that the 
 main difference between the action of the mind in physical 
 construction and in metaphysical, is in the order of time in 
 which the one or the other appears. After the preliminary 
 work in the imagination, the arts separate. That which 
 the mind seems to see, the poet records in words, the 
 painter in pigments, the architect in brick and mortar, the 
 machinist in wood and iron. — Idem. 
 
 FORMULATION, THE CHIEF FUNCTION OF SYSTEMIZING. 
 
 A scientist, philosopher, or statesman is often successful 
 in the degree alone in which he is able to visualize the 
 material effects of a collection of facts, principles, or motives, 
 in such a way as to substitute for the chaos in which they 
 ordinarily appear, what we term a well-outlined system. 
 There is no radical difference in mental action between 
 planning a military campaign executed by guns through the 
 agency of bullets, and a political campaign executed by 
 words through the agency of ballots. — Idem. 
 
 GENERAL AND DISTANT VS. SPECIFIC AND NEAR ART-EFFECTS 
 
 {see also perspective, and proportion dependent on 
 
 APPARENT NOT ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS). 
 
 One not acquainted with the methods of reproducing 
 in color the effects of nature might suppose that it would 
 be necessary merely to go into the fields, and examine 
 near at hand the colors, appearing, say, on a rose or a bush, 
 match them exactly with his pigments, and then use, on 
 his canvas, these pigments thus determined. But every 
 one of experience knows that much more is necessary; 
 and this for the simple reason that colors, when blended 
 and seen from a distance under the influence of light and 
 shade, are very different in appearance than when seen 
 near at hand. A certain fresco in Paris, when examined 
 closely, shows the flesh of a human figure to be painted 
 in green. Owing to the influence of surrounding colors, 
 no other color, at a distance, could be made to have the 
 effect of flesh. Contours are impressed upon the retina 
 in connection with the same processes as those that impress 
 colors upon it. These latter indeed frequently seem to 
 compose the whole image, outlines being merely effects pror 
 
142 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 duced where one color changes to another. Why should 
 it not be recognized that to imitate the appearance of out- 
 lines necessitates the reproduction of general effects, in the 
 same sense that it does to imitate colors? But is this 
 recognized? Undoubtedly — in painting and sculpture ; but 
 not, in our times, in architecture. Yet it is as rational 
 for a man to suppose that he can produce satisfactory 
 effects of outline through causing a building to measure just 
 as many inches across the top as across the bottom, or 
 through causing a cornice to be exactly straight, or causing 
 columns to be exactly the same distance apart, as it would be 
 for him to suppose that he could produce satisfactory effects 
 of color by exactly matching with his pigments the apparent 
 hues of a rose or a bush, when examined close at hand. 
 — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color ^ xiv. 
 
 Whatever benefit we may derive, therefore, and it may be 
 much, from the accurate measurements of the buildings of 
 the Greeks, we can never find out, in this way alone, those 
 elements of proportion which they esteemed of most im- 
 portance. ... To understand what these elements were 
 we must examine their buildings, as intimated on page 35, 
 not near at hand, but from a distance. The same holds 
 good in principle as applied to the processes through which 
 we come to understand any works of art. If we wish to 
 study Raphael, we do not start by trying to detect the way 
 in which he put the paint upon his canvas. We sit before a 
 finished work of his where we can gaze, unconscious of 
 the paint, at what seems flesh and blood infused with thought 
 and grace and beauty. We feel his composition in our 
 souls before we touch it with our fingers. If we wish to 
 study Shakespere, we do not start by testing how his lines 
 will parse and scan. We read, or we hear read, an act or a 
 scene. We listen to the music of his sentences. We heed 
 the accents of the living men of his drama. We note the 
 play of fancy that passes between them, their bursts of 
 passion and the friction of their thoughts as they flame out 
 so that heaven and hell both brighten to reveal their 
 secrets. We move with ordinary men and women, but 
 cast in a heroic mould. We live in history that was 
 dead but has found a resurrection. We revel in the bliss of 
 a new world that the poet's genius has created. These 
 are facts that pedants never seem to realize. They teach 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 143 
 
 the spelling-book and mathematics, and think that out 
 of these the works of art develop. But works of art are 
 germed in seed that drops down from above. Like Min- 
 erva from the brain of Jove, they spring to life full-armed; 
 and soar through air before they tread the earth; and 
 when, through using spelling-books and mathematics, 
 men make the art-forms fit intelligence, these forms have 
 no artistic value save to those who know enough to search 
 beneath them for the principle that formed them, a prin- 
 ciple manifested in results that cannot be perceptible ex- 
 cept to larger and more comprehensive views in which the 
 parts appear related to the wholes, and the wholes related 
 to the parts. So, to judge of these Greek buildings, we 
 must see them from a distance where such views are possi- 
 ble. Indeed, the very conception that the Greek had of 
 proportion indicates as much. How could he study what 
 he considered the inter measurement between the parts, 
 except from a point where all, or at least a majority of all, 
 the parts were visible? Again, in order to find what the 
 Greek considered desirable in architectural proportion, 
 we should draw our conclusions from examining as many 
 temples as we can, — Idem, xi. 
 
 "genesis of art-form, the.*' analysis of the book. 
 Form, as related to art in general, was treated in the 
 volume entitled **The Genesis of Art-Form." Taking up 
 the thread of thought where dropped in the previous 
 volume, this opens by examining the very beginnings of form 
 when representing significance. The necessity is pointed 
 out of having inaudible and invisible thoughts or emotions, 
 when they are to be imparted to another, communicated to 
 him through some audible and visible meditmi. Then 
 it is pointed out that the particular method in which they 
 may be thus communicated in art is only one of many simi- 
 lar ways in which the mind is obliged to use material sur- 
 roundings. It is recalled that all knowledge, and not only 
 this, but all understanding and application of the laws of 
 botany, mineralogy, psychology, or theology, depend upon 
 the degree in which a man learns to separate certain plants, 
 rocks, mental activities, or religious dogmas from others, 
 and to unite and classify and name them; and that it is 
 classification which enables him to have knowledge and 
 understanding of the materials which nature furnishes, and 
 
144 ^N ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 to make an efficient use of them. It is maintained that, 
 while science classifies facts, and philosophy theories, 
 art classifies forms or appearances; and it is stated also 
 that the general process in all cases is the same, — a pro- 
 cess which involves an application of the same princi- 
 ples of association and comparison which are mentioned 
 on page 426 as being at the basis of all earliest attempts at 
 expression. This process in its elementary stages is a put- 
 ting of like with like. If the factors be not actually alike 
 in form the process involves gathering them into groups 
 according to the principle of mental association; or, if 
 they be alike in form, of doing the same according to the 
 principle of comparison. The essay maintains, in short, 
 that it is the endeavor to produce unity of impression out 
 of the variety and complexity everywhere apparent in na- 
 ture, as one is influenced sometimes by the requirements 
 of the mind, sometimes by those of nature, and sometimes 
 by both, that leads to the different methods adopted in 
 art-construction, the whole of which methods, arranged 
 in the order of their logical development, are indicated in 
 a chart.' — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color ^ 
 Recapitulation in, xxvi. 
 
 GENIUS {see ARTISTIC VS. SCIENTIFIC, INDIVIDUALITY IN ART, 
 
 INSPIRED, PERSONALITY AND UNIVERSALITY, and 
 
 SUBCONSCIOUS MENTAL ACTION). 
 
 What is genius? The term is derived — through the 
 Latin word genus, meaning something characterized by the 
 source of its begetting or production, therefore a family, 
 race, or, in this sense, kind — from the word genere, meaning 
 to beget or produce. The word genus seems to combine, 
 therefore, the ideas both of kind and of production. It 
 means the kind that is produced. The termination ius means 
 belonging to. Therefore, genius means something belonging 
 to the kind that is produced. All recognize that by the 
 genius of an age or a race, as when we say "the genius of 
 the American people," is meant the kind of production in 
 thought, word, deed, invention, or composition, that belongs 
 to the age or race. And what is a genius but primarily 
 a man who is the source of this kind of production? — a 
 man whose feelings, aims, opinions, deeds, or words are 
 true representatives of kinds that belong to his age or race? 
 
 * See page 89 of this volume. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 145 
 
 I 
 Was not this true of Homer, Pheidias, Raphael, Milton, 
 Mozart, Goethe, and Beethoven? Could their works have 
 appeared except when and where they were produced? 
 And if we want to find out what was the genius of the age 
 of each, do we not examine what was done by these men and 
 by others who were typical of their age ? And is not this one 
 reason why we term these men geniuses? But, of course, 
 there is also another reason, yet it is connected with this. 
 As indicated on pages 223 to 227, a man is considered to 
 be a genius in the degree in which he is able to give un- 
 impeded outward expression to results coming from the 
 hidden sphere of mind. But this sphere is occultly con- 
 nected with the whole hidden or spiritual sphere of nature. 
 The genius, therefore, is a man whose temperament makes 
 him one of his kind, and therefore makes his products 
 reflect the fact, in the sense of inclining him to be influenced 
 as are other human beings, and as are also all the animate 
 or inanimate developments of life that is not human. The 
 word genius is sometimes used for the word spirit. Why 
 is this except because genius tends like spirit to make the 
 mind work in harmony with what may be termed the Mind 
 in nature, and hence, according to the principle brought 
 out on page 94, with the Spirit, or, if we choose to be 
 polytheistic, the spirits in nature, of which Milton sings 
 when he says? — 
 
 And as I wake, sweet music breathe 
 
 Above, about, or underneath, 
 
 Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, 
 
 Or th' unseen Genius of the wood. 
 
 // Penseroso. 
 
 The genius's interpretations of nature commend them- 
 selves, therefore, both because nature makes the same 
 appeal to him as to others through its visible forms, and 
 also because it causes a unity of action between the sub- 
 conscious processes of his mind and its own invisible pro- 
 cesses. This unity of action results in expression which 
 is artistic inasmuch as it is characteristic of the individual 
 artist, and yet is also natural inasmuch as it is characteristic 
 of what is experienced by men in general, the representa- 
 tions of art, notwithstanding the intervention of human 
 skill, appearing to spring up and flow forth to influence as 
 instinctively as fountains issue into streams and buds burst 
 into blossoms. As a result, the art of any age is the bloom- 
 ing and fruitage of the influences of nature and humanity 
 
146 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER* S CABINET 
 
 that have been at work on every side throughout long 
 centuries. — The Representative Significance of Form, xiv. 
 
 The same conception of the province of genius is involved 
 also in the use that we make of another word, — the adjective 
 genial, meaning that which is kindly stimulating because 
 coming from one of one's kind or kin. We all recognize 
 this meaning as applied in ordinary language to the pro- 
 ductive influence of one natural object upon another, — 
 that of the April sun, for instance, on the meadow. A 
 similar influence, natural and life-stimulating, on the part 
 of works of art upon the human mind, is similarly termed. 
 But a writer or composer of any product of art who is really 
 genial or congenial is, so far, a genius. Thus not alone these 
 words, but the ideas expressed in them, appear related. — 
 Idem, XIV. 
 
 GENIUS AND LEARNING {see IMAGINATION and INFORMATION). 
 
 Let it not be thought, then, that education, experi- 
 ence, and learning unfit one for those pursuits which are 
 usually supposed to necessitate genius. Milton wrote 
 little poetry until he had ended his argumentative and 
 political work. Goethe and Schiller both profited much 
 from the discriminating scientific criticism to which, as 
 appears in their correspondence, they were accustomed 
 to submit their productions; at all events, they achieved 
 their greatest successes subsequent to it. And with 
 criticism playing all about his horizon, like lightnings 
 from every quarter of the heavens, who can calculate how 
 much of the splendor of Shakespeare is attributable to 
 this by-play among the circle of dramatists by whom he 
 was surrounded? With new forms rising still like other 
 Venuses above the miasmas of the old Campagna, who 
 can estimate how much the excellence of the Italian artists 
 has been owing to the opportunities afforded in historic 
 Rome for critical study ? — Essentials of Esthetics, iv. 
 
 GESTURE {see REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN GESTURES). 
 
 GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE {see ARCHITECTURE, EXPRESSION IN, 
 
 ARCHITECTURE, WHY, and REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 EFFECTS IN NATURAL OUTLINES). 
 
 One peculiarity of this style is that it can be varied almost 
 infinitely. A number of buildings can be constructed either 
 with towers or without them, and yet, when grouped to- 
 gether, produce an effect of unity. . . . Another peculiarity 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS I47 
 
 of the style is that it admits of equal variety in expense. The 
 stone is generally uncut, but any amount of carving is 
 admissible in the elaboration of details. ... As a result, a 
 dormitory, costing only fifty thousand dollars, may stand at 
 the side of a chapel costing five hundred thousand, and 
 yet both buildings contribute equally to the harmony of 
 the whole series of buildings. — Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, xix. 
 
 GRADATION IN OUTLINE. 
 
 As we look at the successive arches of a bridge, or of an 
 aqueduct, we see them gradually becoming smaller and 
 smaller. If we look at a row of trees that is sufficiently 
 long, we see it pass gradually into a narrow stretch of 
 green. Two parallel outlines, if we continue to trace 
 them when carried up toward the zenith, or toward the 
 horizon, appear gradually to converge. Sometimes, if 
 they ascend a hill, though themselves perfectly straight, 
 they seem gradually to pass into curves A similar fact 
 is still more evident in the outlines of forms not so in- 
 fluenced by the laws of perspective. Think of the innumer- 
 able curves and angles and straight lines that make up the 
 contour of every mountain, tree, bush, fruit, flower, bird, 
 beast, and man; yet often, not even with a microscope, can 
 one tell just where one form of line ceases and another 
 begins. — The Genesis of Art-Form, xvi. 
 
 GRADATION IN SOUND AND COLOR {see HARMONY OF). 
 
 In listening to a bird singing, to a wind whistling, or to a 
 surf breaking, we usually notice a gradual increase and 
 decrease in the blended sounds. It is the same when observ- 
 ing color. Any ordinary lawn reveals an almost infinite 
 number of shades of green, and the most of these coalesce, 
 but show scarcely a trace of when and where they do it. A 
 clear sky at dawn or sunset exhibits between the horizon 
 and the zenith every color of the spectrum from red to 
 purple, yet few boundary lines between any two colors. 
 Among the maple trees in spring, when just beginning to 
 show their leaves, one can clearly see hues as different as 
 red, yellow, and green, yet it is well-nigh impossible to find 
 in any given cluster just where one color stops and another 
 starts. It is the same with a majority of the hues of 
 nature, whether seen in the flowers beneath us or in the 
 clouds above us. In fact, it is one of the most common 
 
148 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 laws of sight, that when different colors or different shades 
 of the same color come together, the line of demarkation 
 between them is indistinct. — Idem, xvi. 
 
 In music, graduated differences of effect take place in 
 time, as when the movement passes from one key to another. 
 In painting, there is no reason why they shoiild not take 
 place in space, and, if they do, though the vibrations in one 
 part of the retina may not coalesce with those in another 
 part, the eye, for reasons indicated on page 350, may be 
 hardly conscious of the difference. At the same time, 
 as a whole scene is usually visible to a single glance, or to 
 many glances constantly moving from one to another part 
 of the scene, it is doubtful whether, in case the changes 
 are from one decided hue to another, the best effects of 
 harmony can be secured by gradation without the aid of 
 such arrangements of color as have been described under 
 the heads of balance, symmetry, and interchange. — Proportion 
 and Harmony of Line and Color, xxiv. 
 
 GREEN COLOR IN PAINTING. 
 
 Between violet, purple, and red there are differences in 
 degree by no means matched by the differences between 
 their complement aries, yellowish-green and bluish-green. 
 This fact makes the difficulty of using green with its proper 
 contrasts very great ; and this difficulty becomes still greater 
 in view of the position of green on the dividing line between 
 the warm and cold colors, concerning the entirely different 
 uses of which in sunshine and shadow mention was made 
 on page 320. We see one reason, therefore, why a decisive 
 test of a good landscape painter is the way in which he 
 manages his greens, as well too, perhaps, as why decorators 
 in all times have made but alimited use of them. — Idem, xix. 
 
 HARMONY {study also BEAUTY, COMPARISON, and vibratory). 
 
 We must begin by ascertaining exactly what harmony is, 
 and this not in its general but in its technical sense. An 
 answer to the question can be found in no better way than 
 by recalling the discoveries of the scientists as a result of 
 analyzing harmony as it appears in music, the art to the 
 effects of which the term was first applied technically. 
 In this art, through the use, among other methods, of 
 resonators, so constructed as to enable one to detect the 
 presence in a tone of any particular pitch, it has been 
 found that notes which are harmonious are such as con- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 149 
 
 tain the same elements of pitch, or — what is the same 
 thing — are notes in which effects of like pitch are repeated. 
 For instance, when a string Hke that of a bass viol is struck, 
 its note, if musical, is not single or simple : it is compound. 
 Suppose that it produces the tone of the bass C — represent- 
 ing a sound-wave caused by the whole length of the string. 
 This C is the main, or, as it is termed, the prime tone that 
 we hear. But, at the same time, this same string usually 
 divides at the middle, producing what is called a partial 
 tone of the C above the base, representing a sound-wave 
 caused by one half the string's length. It often produces, too, 
 partial tones of the G above this, of the C above this, and of 
 the E above the last C (etc.). . . . This C, G, C, and E of 
 the major chord are in harmony with the lower bass C, 
 because they are made up of effects that already enter 
 into its composition. The chord as a whole, therefore, or 
 any analogous development of it, is a result of putting like 
 effects with like. — Art in Theory, xii. 
 
 Glancing at the above, suppose that we were to sound 
 the note C, and then to sound, either after or with it, — ■ 
 for the laws of harmony have to do with the methods of 
 using notes both consecutively and conjointly, — notes 
 whose partial tones connect them most closely with C, 
 — what notes should we sound? We should sound F, — 
 should we not? — of which C is the third partial, and G, 
 which itself is the third partial of C. This would give us 
 C — F — G — C. But these are the very tones accredited to 
 the **lyre of Orpheus," which represented the earliest of 
 the Greek scales. 
 
 Let us add to these notes those whose partial tones are 
 the next nearly connected with C, F, or G. They are 
 D the third partial of G, E the fifth partial of C, A the 
 fifth of F, and B the fifth of G. This gives us C— D— E— 
 F — G — A — B — C, which is our own major scale, the main 
 one that we use to-day; and is similar to one used by 
 the Greeks after theirs had been expanded to seven 
 notes. — Essentials of /Esthetics, xvii. 
 
 Why is it necessary that tones should chord ? Why does 
 the mind or the ear demand concordance in the sounds 
 used in music ? — In answer to this we might begin by infer- 
 ring a psychological reason. Sounds result from vibrations 
 that cause oscillations in the air, and through it in the liquid 
 
150 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 within the inner labyrinth of the ear. There is a sense in 
 which it may be said that the mind is conscious of these 
 vibrations, for when it hears a certain number of them, per 
 second, it invariably hears a sound of a certain pitch. Now 
 if the vibrations causing two notes start together every 
 second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time that they are made, 
 as they do in the notes composing the musical concords, it is 
 easy for the mind — on the supposition, of course, that in 
 some subtle way it takes cognizance of vibrations — to per- 
 ceive a unity in the result, because it can analyze the 
 vibrations and perceive that they all form exact sub- 
 divisions of certain definite wholes. But if the vibrations 
 causing the tones start together at only long and irregular 
 intervals, then any analysis or classification of the different 
 constituent effects is impossible. Of course such a result 
 cannot be else than confusing and unsatisfactory. 
 
 This explanation, which is the one given by Euler, has 
 much to recommend it. We know how it is in the case of 
 musical rhythm. Certain measures, to all of which an 
 equal time is given, are filled with notes and rests that 
 represent exact subdivisions of this time — the whole of it or 
 a half, a quarter, an eighth, or more, as the case may be. 
 When the musician composes or sings in rhythm, he beats 
 time, mentally if not physically, and puts into each measure 
 just the number of notes that will fill it. Why are we not 
 justified in surmising that the principle which the mind 
 applies consciously when it counts the beats that determine 
 the relations of a note to rhythm, it applies uncon- 
 sciously when it counts the beats or vibrations that deter- 
 mine the relations of tone to pitch.? The fundamental 
 bass note of the chord represents a certain number of 
 vibrations per second. These constitute, so to speak, the 
 chord-measure, and only those notes can be used in the 
 chord which represent the partial tones produced by exact 
 subdivisions of this measure. In fact, there is ground 
 enough for holding the theory that music is no more than 
 an artistic adaptation of the laws of rhythm, of a part of 
 which, as related to duration, the mind is conscious; but 
 of another part of which, as related to pitch — i. e., to the 
 rhythm resulting from tone-vibrations, — it is unconscious. 
 
 But it has not yet been shown here that the mind actually 
 does count or compare vibrations. It may do this, but 
 is there any proof of it? We may best begin an answer to 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 151 
 
 this question by going back of the action of the mind to 
 that of the ear that occasions it, and ask, is there any proof 
 of a physical requirement in the ear underlying an 
 operation analogous to comparison as made in the realm of 
 consciousness ? 
 
 There is proof of such a requirement. If we sound at 
 the same time two very low notes of an organ separated 
 from each other on the scale by only half a tone, — C and 
 C# for instance, — we shall hear, not a consecutive tone, 
 but a succession of throbs or beats. Knowing that all 
 sounds are caused by vibrations, and that a difference in 
 pitch is caused by a difference in the time of vibrations, it 
 is easy to understand how these beats are produced. Sup- 
 pose that one of the notes is a result of fifty vibrations in a 
 second, and the other of fifty-one. At the end of the 
 twenty-fifth vibration in the first of the tones, there will 
 have been, in the second, twenty-five and one half vibrations. 
 But as each vibration necessitates a movement in one 
 direction half the time, and in a contrary direction 
 the other half the time, the vibrations in the first tone will 
 move from the twenty-fifth to the fiftieth in an opposite 
 direction from those in the second tone. For this reason 
 the vibrations causing the two tones will tend to suppress 
 and to still one another, just as is the case where two waves 
 of nearly equal size but contrary motions come together 
 at the mouth of a river. However, at the fiftieth vibration 
 in the first tone, and at the fifty-first in the second, the 
 vibrations in the two will again move in the same direction, 
 and tend to reinforce one another. A difference between 
 two notes, therefore, corresponding to one vibration in a 
 second, will cause one suppressed period and one reinforced 
 period of sound, — or one beat in a second; a difference of two 
 vibrations, two beats in a second, and so on. In a difference 
 of this kind between low notes caused by a limited number of 
 vibrations in a second, these beats are perceptible, as has 
 been said, and are easily counted; but this is not the case 
 when produced by high notes. Then one of two results 
 follows. The beats either become so numerous as to 
 form vibrations causing an entirely new tone, or else they 
 continue to exist as beats which the ear cannot distinguish, 
 but feels to be disagreeable. 
 
 Why does the ear find these beats disagreeable? For 
 this reason. They are interruptions in the continuity or 
 
152 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 regularity of the vibrations. On page 194 attention was 
 directed to the fact that a musical sound, and therefore 
 all the pleasure derivable from it as such, is due to the 
 rapid periodic, or — what means the same — the regularly 
 recurring motion of the sonorous body; and a noise to its 
 non-periodic, or irregularly recurring motion. 
 
 When beats occur that interfere with harmony, there- 
 fore, there is noise instead of music. But noise in music 
 not only violates the artistic principle which requires that 
 like amid varied effects be put with like, but it communi- 
 cates to the auditory nerves a series of shocks, conveying 
 an intermittent, irregular, disordered excitation; whereas 
 it is natural to suppose that, in all agreeable excitations of 
 the nerves, the thrill and glow that are pleasurable are 
 characterized by the elasticity and freedom accompanying 
 non-interference. We may infer this from the fact that in 
 nature all movements are regular and rhythmical. The 
 leaves and limbs of a twig, for instance, vibrate, when 
 struck by a blow, as regularly as does a pendulum. The 
 same must be true of the oscillations in . . . the audi- 
 torium of the ear. At any rate, we know that only regu- 
 larly recurring vibrations can produce the sensations in 
 the auditory nerves which render music enjoyable. . . . 
 
 In conclusion, we may blend the physiological and psy- 
 chological reasons for the effects of music, thus: The 
 ear has become habituated through long experience to 
 search for unity of effect in sounds. When it hears musical 
 chords, it recognizes, after a few vibrations, that all the 
 sounds are exact subdivisions of some one note, — in other 
 words, that what is heard results from a succession of like 
 amid varied effects. At other times, when the mind cannot 
 recognize that this is the case, it is natural to suppose that 
 there is an endeavor to recognize the fact, and, owing to 
 this endeavor, that there is a positive effort on the part of 
 the organs of sensation in the ear to adjust themselves to 
 the new conditions and to discover elements of unity and 
 likeness that do not exist. That the ear is sometimes suc- 
 cessful in doing this, is proved by its acceptance of the 
 slight variations from true harmony that are found in the 
 temperate scale. In decided discords, however, nothing 
 can make the sounds seem to compare, and the nerves and 
 muscles are wearied by the effort of trying to do it, just as 
 they would be, were they listening intently for sounds or 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS TS3 
 
 footsteps which they failed to hear. Of course, the nerves 
 of hearing, strained, and on the alert, but without success, 
 give the ear pain, not pleasure. Pleasure in connection 
 with sound, aesthetic satisfaction in connection with tone, 
 is experienced by mind or ear in the degree only in which 
 the result is perceived to be a unity obtained from the ap- 
 parent variety of unlike complex wholes hy putting together 
 those that have like partial effects. — Rhythm and Harmony in 
 Poetry and Music, xvi. 
 
 The reader will not fail to notice that the effects of har- 
 mony as thus described are, in important regards, analogous 
 to those of rhythm, and yet of a rhythm so finely grained 
 that it is impossible that the mind should be conscious 
 of its constituent elements. ... It is sometimes said 
 that, as the mind consciously counts the beats in determin- 
 ing rhythm, so, in some subtle v>ray, it unconsciously counts 
 the vibrations in determining harmony. But is it neces- 
 sary to suppose this ? When influenced by tones that seem 
 consonant we are certainly not conscious of counting. Are 
 we conscious of doing it even when influenced by the effects 
 of rhythm ? Are we conscious of anything except of certain 
 accentuations of tone that are equally subdivided into 
 other accentuations — all of which, in some way, are so 
 related that they exactly fit, the smaller into the larger 
 and all into the largest? And if we need not count the 
 accents in rhythm, why should we do it in harmony? 
 Why need we do more than experience certain throbs or 
 thrills of sound equally subdivided into other thrills, all of 
 which are so related that they exactly fit, the smaller into 
 the larger and all into the largest ? As a result of experi- 
 encing these, every part of the auditory organism, under 
 any influence of sound, is under the same influence,— as much 
 so as is every part of a still pool when we have thrown 
 a single stone into it, infinitely varied as may be the sizes 
 of different waves that in remote places circle into ripples. 
 The result, inasmuch as all the sound-waves represent a 
 single impulse, is an unimpeded, free, regularly recurrent 
 vibratory glow of the whole auditory apparatus. But if, 
 on the contrary, the effect resemble that upon the waters 
 of a pool when more than one stone is thrown into it, i. e., 
 if the sound-waves do not coalesce, if the smaller do not 
 fit into the larger, and all together into the largest, then 
 
154 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 nothing ensues but a broken, impeded, constrained, irregu- 
 lar series of jolts or jars. The difference in the ear between 
 the sensation of harmony and of a lack of it, is the physical 
 difference between thrilling or glowing and jolting or jar- 
 ring. Notice, too, that this illustration applies to notes when 
 sounding not only, as in one chord, simultaneously, but, as 
 in different chords, successively. Two things related to 
 the same thing cannot fail, in some way, to be related to 
 each other; and two chords, each containing sets of vibra- 
 tions for which there is a common multiple, and both 
 containing one set of vibrations (i, e., one tone) which is 
 the same, must both be entirely composed of vibrations 
 for which there is some common multiple. This common 
 multiple, moreover, for the vibrations of a first and second 
 chord may be different from that of the vibrations of the 
 second and third chord. It is possible, therefore, for a 
 series of chords, each in part repeating the same tones as 
 the last sounded, and in part introducing new tones, to 
 change, very soon, the whole character of the general 
 vibratory effect; and yet if this be done with sufficient 
 gradualness, the auditory apparatus will experience no 
 jolt or jar, while, at the same time, it will be conscious of 
 a constant progress and so of relief from anything resembling 
 monotony. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color , xx. 
 
 Of course, the early musicians could not have explained 
 exactly why they selected certain notes and put them into 
 a musical scale, and from these began to develop that which 
 has now come to be our elaborated system of melody and 
 harmony. Those artists followed merely the instincts of 
 their aesthetic nature. This prompted them, in construct- 
 ing forms, to select sounds that would naturally go together; 
 and to use these and these only. But what connection is 
 there, it may be asked, between sounds that naturally go 
 together, and those that go together because certain of 
 their effects are alike? None, perhaps, so far as the first 
 musicians were aware. They judged merely by the results 
 that they heard, and had only a limited knowledge of the 
 causes of these. Nevertheless, as w411 be shown presently 
 from an examination of the discoveries of modern science, 
 their ears guided them aright. All the notes of the scale 
 and all the methods of musical harmony owe their origin 
 to a literal fulfilment of the art-principle declared in "The 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 155 
 
 Genesis of Art-Form" to be of universal applicability. 
 This principle is that, in order to receive an impression of 
 unity, the mind groups complex wholes by putting those 
 together that produce like partial effects. — Rhythm arid Har- 
 mony in Poetry and Music , xii. 
 
 Harmony, like rhythm and proportion, often involves 
 very intricate arrangements and developments, but through 
 them all can be detected the presence of this one underlying 
 principle. The following, for instance, represents a com- 
 mon way of accomplishing the result which is termed 
 "making the circuit" of all the major keys. Those un- 
 acquainted with music will understand sufficiently what is 
 meant when it is said that the chords of one key are often 
 discordant with those of another key unless, in some such 
 way as is indicated in this music, an artificial connec- 
 tion has been made between the two. — The Essentials of 
 MstheticSy xvii. 
 
 The main result ... is secured through using such 
 methods as those of interchange, gradation, and transition, 
 which, nevertheless, cause all the divergent parts of a 
 composition to assimilate. Because, too, all the methods 
 in the chart (see page 89 of this volume) are, more or less, 
 connected, music, at times, reveals traces of the influence 
 of every one of these. — Idem. 
 
 HARMONY OF COLOR {see dlso different paragraphs under 
 
 BEAUTY, COMPARISON, and VIBRATORY). 
 
 Like tone-harmony, this was developed, at first, by 
 artists of exceptional taste, knowing little and caring less 
 about the scientific reasons underlying their choice of 
 combinations. But, after art has developed to a certain 
 extent, scientists always make a study of its efl;ects. That 
 which they discover increases not only the knowledge and 
 the appreciation of art on the part of the general public, 
 but also adds not a little to the resources of the artist and 
 to his ability to make further progress. 
 
 Nor must it be supposed that color-harmony, so far 
 as it has been developed from the contributions of science, 
 has been based upon the relations between vibrations in 
 the eye in the same way in which tone-harmony has been 
 based upon the relations between vibrations in the ear. 
 The numbers of the latter vibrations can be and have been 
 definitely determined. The numbers of vibrations causing 
 
156 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 the colors have not been determined except approximately. 
 For this reason, and very wisely, the principles of color- 
 harmony have been developed from facts which, though 
 related to those of vibration, have, unlike them,' been 
 definitely ascertained. The different stages of development 
 have been somewhat as follows : 
 
 The discoveries with reference to the complementary 
 colors,' as described on page 370, led to the natural sup- 
 position that the eye takes pleasure in seeing these two 
 together; and as, in all cases, the two were found to make 
 white, it led to the supposition that any two or more colors 
 making white would cause harmony. Not long after, too, 
 it led to the supposition that these colors must be intro- 
 duced into a painting in just such proportions as to make 
 white. ... A law of this kind, however, though it 
 might be applied to decoration, would evidently interfere 
 with one of the first requisites of the art of painting, namely, 
 that it should represent nature. In how many landscapes 
 can we find the blue of the sky, or the green of the foliage, 
 or the bluish gray of a lowery day, exactly mingled in such 
 proportions with the warmer and lighter yellows, reds, or 
 browns ? 
 
 On the face of it, therefore, this theory did not seem 
 tenable. Modern artists universally reject it. They tell 
 us that the slightest spot of crimson against the green of a 
 forest, or of yellow against the blue of the sky, is all that is 
 needed in order to bring out the brilliancy of the com- 
 plementary coloring. . . . But when it is added that 
 these effects are owing to merely a suggestion given to the 
 mind, one must demur. Those who say it have forgotten 
 a very important principle in aesthetics. That is, that 
 psychological effects (see Chapter 11.) must harmonize with 
 physiological, and, as the latter come first in the order of 
 time, it is not logical either to overlook them or to fail to 
 consider them first. 
 
 The influence in a painting of very slight quantities of 
 complementary coloring seems to suggest the importance 
 of the method of interpretation indicated on pages 375 to 
 378. If we may suppose that a color associated with its 
 complementary produces in the eye an agreeable effect 
 
 ^ The complementary colors are usually said to be red and bluish- 
 green, orange and turquoise -blue, yellow and ultramarine-blue, yellow- 
 ish-green and violet, and green and purple. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 157 
 
 because, for the vibrations causing both colors, there is a 
 common multiple, then we may also suppose that these 
 colors influence, at the same time, the organs of the same 
 retina without producing any sensation of jolting or jarring. 
 All the vibrations are variations of the same unity in that 
 they are partial effects of the same single impulse or set of 
 impulses, resulting in a free, unrestrained vibratory thrill 
 or glow. The quantity of color, therefore, makes no differ- 
 ence with the harmony of the effect. All that is necessary 
 is that the form of vibration causing the one color, be it 
 much or little, should exactly coalesce with the form of 
 vibration causing the other color. It could coalesce in 
 this way, of course, in several different circumstances. 
 First of all, it could do so when there was one predominating 
 color. . . . Thus, in a scene representing moonlight or 
 twilight, or even a storm, especially if at sea, there would 
 necessarily be one pervading color, in some cases banishing 
 almost the suggestion of other colors. . . . Such paintings 
 are said to be characterized by tone, and, as this quality is 
 usually understood, it is difficult to perceive why it does not 
 fulfil a different law of harmony from that which is fulfilled 
 through a use of great variety in coloring. Indeed, it is 
 often represented that it does; as if the theory that har- 
 mony of coloring is produced by uniformity of coloring 
 were antagonistic to the theory that it is produced by 
 variety. . . . But why cannot an identical law be per- 
 ceived to be operative in both cases? Differences in tints 
 and shades of the same hue, while they involve differences 
 in the intensity of the sight-waves, do not necessarily 
 involve differences in their rates or shapes. Therefore 
 uniformity of coloring is fitted to cause all the vibrations 
 of the same retina to coalesce, i. e., to cause all to be exact 
 subdivisions of some common multiple. But the same 
 effect is produced by the use of one predominating color 
 with its various tints and shades, enlivened . . . by an 
 occasional introduction of some tint or shade of its comple- 
 mentary color; and it is produced also when both com- 
 plementary colors are used in almost equal proportions. 
 In fact, color-harmony may result from the use of any col- 
 ors whatsoever, if only they can be made in some way to 
 produce in the organs of color-apprehension an effect of 
 unity. This effect follows whenever all the vibrations of the 
 retina that are near together are multiples of some common 
 
158 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 unit, as is the case when adjoining tints and shades in a 
 painting are of the same hue, or of hues that form comple- 
 mentaries, or for some reason alHed to this, as indicated on 
 pages 370 to 374, are fitted to go together. If, in connection 
 with these hues, others must be used requiring what may- 
 be termed conflicting forms of vibration, these others must, 
 in the painting, be remote from the first, and be connected 
 with them in accordance with methods of securing partial 
 consonance Hke those of interchange, gradation, and transi- 
 tion. . . . Why this should be the case, may be sur- 
 mised by recalHng that a single vibration is to the whole 
 retina about what a single wave is to an ocean. On an ocean, 
 divergent forms of waves would not be recognized to be con- 
 flicting were they widely separated, or were they changed 
 from one form into another with great graduality; and were 
 thus made — to apply the term of physiological psychology 
 — to assimilate. . . . Color-harmony, to be successful, 
 must be a result of an application of the same endeavor 
 after unity of effect which, starting with the principle of 
 putting like with like wherever possible, leads to a careful 
 study and embodiment of all such requirements as those of 
 variety, complement, principality, subordination, balance, 
 parallelism, repetition, alternation, symmetry, massing, 
 interchange, continuity, consonance, gradation, transition, 
 and progress.' This fact is developed in the author's 
 "Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color in Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture." — The Essentials of Esthetics, 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The third method of arriving at the principles underlying 
 the joining of colors is advocated by those who hold that as 
 in music the ratios between the numbers of vibrations per 
 second producing the different notes determine which should 
 go together, so, in painting, the ratios between the numbers 
 of vibrations per second producing the different colors 
 should determine this. As a rule, physicists have had little 
 respect for any advocate of this theory, because he has 
 usually started out with the hypothesis that there is some 
 absolute and necessary connection between the seven colors 
 of the spectrum and the seven notes of the musical scale. 
 As was shown, however, in Chapter XIV. of ** Rhythm and 
 Harmony in Poetry and Music, " these seven notes happen 
 
 * See the Chart in " An Art-Philospher's Cabinet," on page 89. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 159 
 
 to be used merely as a matter of convenience. There have 
 been scales extensively used of four and six notes, and 
 possibly our own might be improved by the addition of two 
 more. As it is, it contains not seven but twelve distinct 
 intervals. There is a principle, however, underlying the 
 formation of all musical scales, as well as of all melody 
 and harmony, which depends upon the relative numbers 
 of vibrations. One cannot refrain from feeling, there- 
 fore, that it is logical to suppose that this same prin- 
 ciple should be exemplified in that which causes colors 
 to harmonize. 
 
 It does not allay this feeling, to remind one that between, 
 say, the 400 trillions of vibrations causing extreme red and 
 the 750 causing extreme violet, the differences in vibration 
 are not sufficient for those of a single octave. ... As 
 it is, we have in the colors all the range of intervals corre- 
 sponding to those of one octave if containing no note be- 
 longing to another. Moreover, the possibility of producing 
 variations in a single color is much greater than that of doing 
 the same in a single sound. Indeed, when we consider the 
 innumerable shades and tints not merely of one color but of 
 all other colors in connection with which this one may pro- 
 duce mixed effects, we are forced to recognize that the range 
 both of single colors and of those that are exactly com- 
 plementary to these is practically infinite, and thus far 
 more than sufficient to make up for the absence in the color- 
 scale of more than one octave. 
 
 So much for the theory; now for the facts confirming it. 
 Let us take the ratios of the numbers of vibrations pro- 
 ducing the sounds, not of all the scale, but of those that 
 harmonize, and apply these ratios to the numbers of vibra- 
 tions producing the different colors, and notice what colors 
 they cause to go together. As the numbers of vibrations 
 producing the colors are exceedingly great, and the difficulty 
 in the spectrum of determining just where one color leaves 
 off and another begins is also great, we must content our- 
 selves with approximate measurements, but even with these 
 we can attain our object. — Proportion and Harmony of Line 
 and Color, xxiii. 
 
 HARMONY OF COLOR AS PRODUCED BY VIBRATIONS. 
 
 Sound-waves are comparatively large. . . . Color-waves 
 are exceedingly small. . . . According to Le Conte in his 
 
I60 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 *' Sight, " there are in the center of the retina, in a space not 
 larger than one tenth of an inch square, no less than a million 
 cones that a wave can influence. ... As is known, too, 
 all these are so connected with their surroundings, as Foster 
 says, by a ** basket-work" or * 'sponge- work, " that they are 
 apparently capable of vibratory motion. If their minute 
 vibrations, as affected by movements in the ether, may be 
 supposed to influence the whole retina in any degree, how 
 can they do so except as one set of waves may be supposed 
 to influence the whole surface of a sea? On the same sea 
 there may be breezes causing waves differing, as these 
 vibrations do, in intensity, in rate, and in shape. But, 
 in case these differences were far apart, and produced by 
 very gradual changes from one form to another, there might 
 be, to an eye capable of perceiving the whole surface at 
 once, no appearance whatever of inharmonious action. It 
 needs to be added, however, that, within the narrow limits 
 of a picture, it is impossible for any colors to be very widely 
 separated, and, not only so, but that, even if they could be, 
 the eye, in shifting attention from one point to another 
 while examining them, would constantly be bringing them 
 into still closer proximity, in fact necessitating often the 
 perception of all the colors on the canvas by exactly the 
 same part of the retina. 
 
 These latter conditions, taken in connection with those 
 mentioned on page 349, will show us that, in considering the 
 harmony of color, there are two main questions to be dis- 
 cussed: first, the selection and arrangement of colors with 
 reference to their general effects in a painting considered as 
 a whole, corresponding to the selection in music of a key- 
 note, involving that of the particular scale and chords that 
 go with it; and, second, the selection and arrangement of 
 colors with reference to their special effects when placed 
 side by side, together with the ways of sufficiently separat- 
 ing and yet connecting them in cases in which placing them 
 side by side would produce discord. This phase of har- 
 mony corresponds to what in music is termed modulation 
 or transition from one key to another. The first of these 
 questions will naturally be discussed while considering the 
 methods in the chart (see page 89 of "An Art- Philosopher's 
 Cabinet**) preceding co7isonance, and the second while con- 
 sidering consonance and the methods following it. — Idem, 
 
 XX. 
 
ks <^ 
 
 a. 
 
 to 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS i6i 
 
 . HARMONY OF POETRY. 
 
 Some may suppose that, in poetry, there are no effects 
 corresponding to those of musical harmony. But this is 
 not so. Inasmuch as poetry uses words, the articulation 
 of these renders them more clearly distinguishable from 
 one another than are musical notes; and there is not the 
 same necessity, as in the latter, for merely tonal distinctions 
 of quality and pitch. But science has ascertained that in 
 addition to the pitch on which a vowel or a consonant is 
 apparently sounded, it has, at least, one partial tone peculiar 
 to itself, which tone is always at the same pitch. For this 
 reason, alliteration, assonance, and rhyme all involve the 
 use of like pitch; consecutive syllables produce different 
 consecutive degrees of pitch, i. e.y melodies, or what are 
 termed tunes of verse; and every syllable containing a 
 vowel and a consonant, like an, for instance, contains two 
 tones that may or may not harmonize. For these reasons, 
 the words of poetry, though in a very subtle, but, at the 
 same time, suggestive way, fulfil the same methods as 
 those of musical harmony. See the author's "Rhythm and 
 Harmony in Poetry and Music," Chapters V. to XII. — 
 The Essentials of Esthetics, xvii. 
 
 It is not true, therefore, that, in arranging words, all that 
 is necessary is to put them together grammatically, and in 
 such a way as to indicate their sense. To produce satis- 
 factory poetic effects either upon the mind or ear, they must 
 be arranged so that their sounds shall occur in a certain 
 order. ^ — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, vii. 
 
 HARMONY OF TONE AND OUTLINE AS PRODUCED INDIRECTLY. 
 
 In artistic speech, as in poetry, the harmonic ratios that 
 underlie musical pitch are often exactly though subtly 
 reproduced. At the same time, the poet who reproduces 
 them successfully, does not do so directly, i. e., by thinking 
 of the pitch of his tones while he is composing. He does 
 so indirectly, i. e., while thinking merely of accommodating 
 the sounds to the physiological requirements of the ear; 
 so that, as the tones pass, the one into the other, they shall 
 produce a satisfactory, agreeable, and artistic effect; in 
 other words, so that the transitions shall seem not sharp and 
 abrupt, but smooth, euphonious, and natural. In order 
 to attain this end, poets use such methods as in the repeated, 
 
 * See page 89 of "An Art-Philosopher's Cabinet." 
 
i62 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 or regularly recurring sounds in alliteration, assonance, and 
 rhyme, or in the very easily coalescing sounds in pho- 
 netic syzygy and gradation. . . . When we are using a 
 phrase like "Many men of many minds," though the un- 
 accented syllables differ, the fact that the organs, being 
 once arranged for the m-sound in the accented syllables, 
 regularly, when these recur, return to this same position, 
 makes the utterance easy .... So in the arts of outline. 
 What the artist successful in these thinks of, is the method 
 of accommodating their appearance to the physiological 
 requirements of the eye so that they shall have satisfactory, 
 agreeable, and artistic effects. . . . Again, outlines, or 
 those parts of them nearest to one another, may be said to 
 be arranged according to the requirement just indicated, 
 when they are adjusted in such ways that straight lines are 
 made to pass into curves, or curves of one kind into those 
 of another kind, by regular degrees of change. . . . 
 According to this method, though there may be conscious 
 changes in axis, focus, or lens, as the eyes look from one 
 line or part of a line to another, the changes are as slight as 
 possible, and occur by regular degrees — in these regards 
 evidently producing effects corresponding to those of verse 
 which are most nearly connected with phonetic gradation.^ 
 — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color y xiv. 
 
 HARMONY, SIMILARLY PRODUCED IN ALL THE ARTS {see olso 
 
 correspondences) . 
 Thus far, we have found that poetry and music are alike 
 in that both contain melody and harmony. But when we 
 attempt to go beyond this, and to inquire in what ways 
 melody and harmony are manifested in each, we find great 
 differences. This discovery is important, not only on its 
 own account, but, as we shall find in another place, on 
 account of the light that it throws on the correspondences 
 which we should expect to exist between harmony of sound 
 and of color. That which connects the arts is the unity 
 of method underlying them. In each of them this method 
 is applied to a different germ. By keeping this fact in mind 
 we shall be able to recognize, as would otherwise be impos- 
 sible, in what sense the effects of harmony in all the arts 
 are secured in ways essentially the same. — Rhythm and 
 Harmony in Poetry and Music, xii. 
 
 * See page 89 of "An Art-Philosopher's Cabinet." 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 163 
 
 HISTORIC, NOT THE HIGHEST FORM OF ART-CRITICISM. 
 
 The claim of the historian that all art is of interest and 
 deserving of study is not true as applied to the artist as an 
 artist. To him only such art is of interest as has attained 
 a certain high level of excellence, which it is the object 
 of criticism to discover, and which excellence, as we know, 
 has appeared only at certain favored periods. It is worth 
 while to notice, too, as just suggested above, that these 
 periods are not necessarily identical with those that are 
 under the influence of the historic spirit. The tendency 
 of this, unless counterbalanced, is to direct attention to 
 forms as forms, not to these as expressions of spirit; or, if so, 
 only of the spirit of the past. The practical results of such a 
 tendency are, in the first place, as already intimated, imi- 
 tation, and, in the second place, degeneracy. The nature of 
 the mind is such that it must vary somewhat that which it 
 imitates; and if its variations be not wrought in accordance 
 with the principles underlying the first production of the 
 imitated form, the original proportions of the different parts 
 of this as related to one another are not preserved, and 
 the whole is distorted. For this reason, it is fully as im- 
 portant — to say no more — for the artist to continue to 
 work in accordance with the methods of the great masters 
 as to continue to produce the exact kind of work that 
 they did. And if we inquire into these methods, we shall 
 find that, in art as in religion, philosophy, and science, 
 the one fact which distinguishes not only such charac- 
 ters as Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, Gautama, Paul, 
 Copernicus, and Newton, but also Raphael, Angelo, 
 Titian, Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, and Wagner, 
 is that they have resisted the influences of traditional- 
 ism sufficiently, at least, to be moved as much from within 
 as from without; as much by their own feeling and thinking 
 as by those of others who have preceded them, and whose 
 works surround them; as much, therefore, by that which 
 results from a psychologic method — for we must not forget 
 that there is always a necessary connection between one's 
 method of studying art and of practising it — as by that 
 which follows an historic. In an age when the influence of 
 the latter is so potent that not one in ten seems to be able 
 to detect, even in his own conceptions, the essential differ- 
 ences that separate archeology from art, it is well to have 
 : emphasized again, as is done in every period when pro- 
 
164 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 duction is at its best, the importance of the former method. 
 — Art in Theory, Preface. 
 
 HOMER, WHY HIS METHODS DESERVE STUDY (see EARLIER). 
 
 These poems of Homer have stood the tests of centuries, 
 and there are reasons why they have survived them. The 
 consideration which should interest us most in the present 
 connection is the fact that the poems were produced by a 
 man who spoke directly from the first promptings of nature; 
 a man upon whom the methods of representation in other 
 arts, and of presentation as used in science and philosophy, 
 had had the least possible influence. In his works, therefore, 
 better than in any others with which, in our day, we can 
 become acquainted, we can study the tendencies of poetry 
 in its most spontaneous and unadulterated form. — Poetry 
 as a Representative Art, xxii. 
 
 HUMANITIES. 
 
 "The humanities" . . . are the arts through which a man 
 can cause forms, otherwise often merely material in their 
 influence, to thrill and glow with emotion and meaning; 
 through which he can show himself able to breathe, as it 
 were, something of that sympathetic and intellectual life 
 which has already given life and humanity to his own 
 material frame. — Art in Theory, ix. 
 
 HUMANITIES, SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TERM AS APPLIED TO ART. 
 
 Instead of considering particular works of art, as they 
 appeal to individuals, take them collectively, as they appeal 
 to men in general. What do men call them? One term, 
 almost universally used, is ''the humanities." Would 
 this term have been used by way of distinction unless it had 
 been thought possible to embody in the art- work all the high- 
 est possibilities of humanity ? Certainly not. But is there 
 any highest possibility of humanity which is not connected 
 with the human mind? Certainly not, again. But what 
 is the mind? What but a reservoir of thought and emotion 
 ever on the alert to detect significance in everything that 
 is seen, and to express this in everything that is handled? 
 And what is a human mind? A mind in a body, not so? 
 And this body is a combination of nerves and muscles, 
 sensitive to every phase of apparent form, and capable of 
 being trained to an almost limitless extent in the direction 
 of reproducing it. The arts, therefore, which are distinc- 
 tively the humanities, must involve both the expression 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 165 
 
 of significance and the reproduction of form. — Paintings 
 Sculpture^ and Architecture as Representative Arts, xiii. 
 
 HUMANIZING OF NATURE BY ART. 
 
 Art humanizes nature according to the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of one man, yet succeeds in making it human for all 
 because the thoughts and feelings of this man accord in 
 general with those of all men. The artist is a mediator 
 between the actual truth of nature and the possibility 
 in the race of recognizing actual truth. He is in fact the 
 priest of nature, in his rank inferior only to the priest of 
 revelation. He, too, lifts the veil that hangs about God's 
 earthly tabernacle. He, too, steps within the holy place, 
 bows before the light which shines from the Shekinah, and 
 comes back to the masses bearing them a message from that 
 which always dwells behind the symbol. — The Representa- 
 tive Significance of Form, xiv. 
 
 IDEAL, AN, WHAT IT IS. 
 
 An ideal is an idea represented to the imagination in 
 the outlines, greatly beautified often, of some known object, 
 event, or experience. This is always the condition when a 
 conception becomes artistic. No matter how much in it 
 may be derived from the vague intimations of subconscious 
 intellection, it is fitted for art in the degree alone in which, 
 for the time being, it has been made to assume exactly 
 what a religious conception may not even suggest, namely, a 
 definite form. — Idem, ix. 
 
 IDEALS, WHY ORIGINATED. 
 
 Science is concerned with knowledge; and one cannot 
 have knowledge without some comprehension of preceding 
 material conditions. But art is concerned with ideals; 
 and ideals, however much or little one may know of a 
 preceding condition, are not material. They are mental. 
 Circumstances and our very nature prevent all of us from 
 learning about more than a few objects and from experi- 
 encing more than a few phases of life. Nevertheless, we all 
 desire to possess the results that would ensue, provided 
 such were not the case. Therefore the boy who cannot 
 have the experience surmises what might be the experience 
 of a sailor or a general; and the man in the same condition 
 surmises what might be the experience of a fairy or a saint. 
 — Idem, X. 
 
i66 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS, WHY EFFECTIVE IN DISCOURSE. 
 
 We all know that the man who makes a large use of 
 illustrations and figures, the imaginative man, or the man 
 sufficiently imaginative to give a graphic as well as logical 
 form to his thought, is, as a rule, a more successful ora- 
 tor than the man who does not. Why? It is because 
 he is addressing his audience according to methods of 
 the mind's nature which operate in a different and deeper 
 way than is exemplified in plain language. He is com- 
 municating his thought not merely as it has assumed shape 
 when formulated on the lips, but as it emerges into con- 
 sciousness, when conceived in the mind. So far as possible, 
 without the intervention or interference of audible forms 
 between his conceptions and his hearers' conceptions, or 
 between what he apprehends and what he desires to have 
 them apprehend, he is bringing that which is in the depths 
 of his own spirit into direct contact with the depths of their 
 spirits. In this way, he is often making them do more than 
 merely understand. He is leading them, step by step, 
 through all the processes of his own mind, starting with 
 these processes at the very springs of psychic action. He 
 is influencing them as if they were expressing their own 
 thought. In making them visualize this, he is making 
 them, for themselves, vitalize it — making them feel and 
 realize it in a way impossible according to any other method. 
 Essay on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 IMAGINATION AND COMPARISON AS USED IN ART {sec 
 
 COMPARISON and contrast). 
 What is the faculty of mind from which springs the kind 
 of repetition developed in art when elaborated in accord- 
 ance with the principle of representation. What is it but 
 the imagination, the faculty which has to do with the imag- 
 ing of one thing in or by another ? In an art-product, forms 
 are grouped together because imagination perceives that 
 they are alike or allied, in other words that they compare, 
 either exactly or very nearly. If, for the sake of variety, 
 a few subordinate features are introduced of which this is 
 not true, even then the clearest possible consciousness 
 that comparison is the process and that these features are 
 exceptional, is manifested by the fact that they are ac- 
 knowledged to be introduced artistically in the degree in 
 which they exactly contrast with the other features. But 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 167 
 
 no one can originate or recognize a contrast, — which is an 
 effect caused by agreement in many features but disagree- 
 ment in, at least, one feature, — except as a result of com- 
 parison, which itself is merely the mode of procedure of 
 imagination. — Art in Theory y v. 
 
 IMAGINATION, AS AFFECTED BY REPRESENTATION AND 
 IMITATION {see REPRESENTATION VS. IMITATION). 
 
 It is precisely for this reason, too, because art does 
 and can represent, and does not and need not literally 
 imitate, that the faculty through which it exerts its chief 
 influence upon the mind, as has been so often observed 
 but seldom explained, is the imagination. A literal imi- 
 tation, leaving nothing for the imagination to do, does not 
 stimulate its action. Whistles or bells in music; common- 
 place phrases or actions in poetry; and indiscriminate par- 
 ticularities of detail in the work of pencil, brush, or chisel, 
 usually produce disenchanting effects entirely aside from 
 those that we feel to be legitimate to art. This is largely 
 because the artist, in using them, has forgotten that his aim 
 is not to imitate but to represent. It is well to observe here, 
 too, that an effect, appealing primarily to the imagination, 
 necessarily passes through it into all the faculties of mind; 
 and therefore that the distinctive interest awakened in them 
 all by works of art is really due to that which affects first the 
 imagination. — Art in Theory, iv. 
 
 IMAGINATION, AS AIDING SCIENCE (5^6 SCIENCE AIDED BY ART). 
 
 The mind that can make discoveries of great truths and 
 principles is, as a rule, the mind that, when it can advance 
 no longer, step by step, can wing itself into these unexplored 
 regions. How can it do this? Through imagination. 
 How can imagination, when doing it, detect the truth? 
 According to a law of being which makes the mind of man 
 work in harmony with the mind in nature, which makes an 
 imaginative surmisal with reference to material things a 
 legitimate product of an intelligent understanding of them. 
 This is the law of correspondence or analogy, which can 
 often sweep a man's thoughts entirely beyond that which is 
 a justifiable scientific continuation of the impression 
 received from nature. Only in art is the mind necessitated 
 and habituated to recognize this law, which fact may 
 not only suggest a reason why so many successful inventors 
 have started in life, like Fulton, Morse, and Bell, by making 
 
i68 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 a study of some form of art; but it may almost justify 
 a general statement that no great discovery is possible to 
 one whose mind is not able to go beyond that which is 
 ordinarily done in science. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 Imagination is a forerunner of investigation ; and investi- 
 gation furnishes an impetus to imagination. For this 
 reason a great thinker, whether a poet or a philosopher, 
 although he will incline to the one method or to the other, 
 according to the bent of his genius, must not be wholly 
 deficient in the qualities that go to make up either. Nor, so 
 far as education can atone for deficiency, will his education 
 be complete until he has cultivated the powers that go to 
 make up both. Goethe was a student of science; and his 
 poetry owes much to his scientific studies. Dante and 
 Milton were scientific in their poetry, and Plato and Spinoza 
 were poetic in their philosophies. As Sir Wm. Hamilton 
 says, in the thirty-third of his "Lectures on Metaphysics": 
 **A vigorous power of representation is as indispensable a 
 condition of success in the abstract sciences as in the poetical 
 and plastic arts; and it may accordingly be reasonably 
 doubted whether Aristotle or Homer were possessed of the 
 more powerful imagination." — The Representative Signifi- 
 cance of Form, viii. 
 
 IMAGINATION, AS INFLUENCED BY MUSIC VS. POETRY. 
 
 Literature belongs to the department of art. This fact 
 necessitates its appealing, not — as science does — to the 
 understanding through direct statements with reference 
 to ideas or emotions, but to the imagination through forms 
 representative of these. In other words, the imagi- 
 nation thinks of that which art presents, by perceiving 
 images which appear in the mind. But in different arts 
 these images are awakened in different ways. The inarticu- 
 lated sounds heard in music start within one a general 
 emotive tendency— active or restful, triumphant or despond- 
 ing, gay or sad, as the case may be — and this tendency 
 influences the general direction of thought; but exactly 
 what the form of the thought — or the image — shall be, the 
 mind is left free to determine for itself. If a reciter forget 
 to appeal to imagination according to the methods of sound, 
 he ceases to have that drift which is necessary in order to 
 draw into the channel of his thought, and sweep onward, as 
 music does, the emotions of his audience. If he forget to 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 169 
 
 appeal to imagination according to the methods of sight, 
 i. e., to remember to what an extent his words, and each 
 word in its place, must cause his audience to think in 
 pictures, then his motive, being merely musical, begins to 
 have the effect legitimate to music. It either lulls people to 
 sleep or, if not, at least leaves their minds free to deter- 
 mine for themselves what shall be the substance of their 
 thought. — Essay on the Literary Artist and Elocution. 
 
 IMAGINATION, THE SOURCE OF ART. 
 
 Art is distinctively a product of imagination, of that 
 faculty of the mind which has to do with perceiving images, 
 — the image of one thing in the form of another. While 
 science, therefore, may find a single form interesting in itself, 
 art, at its best, never does. It looks for another form with 
 which the first may be compared. While science may be 
 satisfied with a single fact, art, at its best, never is. It 
 demands a parallel fact or fancy, of which the first furnishes 
 a suggestion. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 IMITATION AND EXPRESSION NOT ANTAGONISTIC. 
 
 Why cannot and why should not a work of art be equally 
 successful in imitation and in expression, in execution and 
 in purpose? — there is no reason except that the most of 
 us are narrow in our aims and sympathies, and prefer to 
 have our art as contracted and one-sided as ourselves. 
 But this is not the spirit that will ever lead to the develop- 
 ment of great art. It may foster the mechanical school, 
 where everything runs to line, and the impressionist, where 
 everything runs to color, but it will not always blend both 
 lines and colors sufficiently to produce even satisfactory 
 form, and it will never make this form an inspiring pres- 
 ence by infusing into it the vitality of that thought and 
 feeling which alone can entitle it to be a work of the hu- 
 manities. — Art in Theory, ill. 
 
 IMITATION, ARTISTIC, DUE TO EXCESS OF LIFE-FORCE. 
 
 Imitation without reference to that which underlies the 
 method, or has to do with the end which it is desired 
 to attain, always arises from a condition in which the 
 tendency to activity on the part of the imitator is in excess 
 of that which needs to be expended, or which, in the cir- 
 cumstances, can be expended, upon gaining what is really 
 necessary for the supply of material wants. The young 
 cannot realize the need of expending it upon these, nor do 
 
I70 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 they know how and where to expend it thus. Therefore 
 they play, and the form of their play is imitative. Their 
 elders, on the contrary, realize that they must work; and 
 they have learned how and where to do it. Therefore they 
 seldom play, having neither the time nor the inclination for 
 it. But that which causes indulgence in play in any case is 
 excess of life-force which, if it cannot be expended in obtain- 
 ing that which is needful for the supply of material wants, 
 must be expended in other directions. — Idem, vii. 
 
 IMITATION, ARTISTIC, INCLUDES GENERALIZATION. 
 
 Imagine a gardener classifying his roses — as he must do 
 instinctively the moment that he has to deal with any large 
 number of them — and obtaining thus a general concep- 
 tion of the flower. Then imagine him trying in some 
 artificial way to produce a single rose embodying this 
 conception. This rose will very likely resemble some one 
 rose particularly present to his mind while forming it; 
 yet, probably, because, before starting with his work, he 
 has obtained a conception of roses in general, his product 
 will manifest some rose-like qualities not possessed by 
 the specimen before him, but suggested by others. That 
 is to say, because of his general conception derived from 
 classifying, he does more than imitate — he represents 
 in that which is a copy of one rose ideas derived from 
 many roses. The same principle applies to all works of art. 
 Let a man write a story or paint a picture. In nine cases 
 out of ten in the exact degree in which he has observed and 
 classified many like events or scenes, he will add to his pro- 
 duct the results of his own thinking or generalizing. In 
 fact, it is a question whether the chief charm of such works 
 is not imparted by the introduction into them, in legitimate 
 ways, of these kinds of generalizations having their sources 
 not in the particular things described, but in the brains of 
 the describers, who have already been made familiar with 
 many other things somewhat similar. Shakespeare certainly 
 did not get the most attractive features of his historical 
 plays from history, nor Turner those of his pictures from 
 nature. So, as a rule, even in the most imitative of works, 
 the really great artist, consciously or unconsciously, gives 
 form to conceptions that he has derived from an acquaint- 
 ance with many other objects of the same class as those 
 imitated. — The Genesis of Art-Form, i. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 171 
 
 IMITATION IN ART, ARISTOTLE 's CONCEPTION OF. 
 
 The general result of emphasizing unduly the imitative 
 side of aesthetics is to lead men to consider art merely a 
 reproduction of reality as manifested in form, and not to 
 consider it, in any important sense, a representation of 
 ideality, or an expression of human thought and feeling. Is 
 there anything in Aristotle's conception of art as imitation 
 to justify a deduction that he did not consider it to be an 
 expression of human thought and feeling? — Strange as 
 it may appear to some, nothing whatever. His own 
 explanation of what he meant by imitation or mimicry 
 {\)X^ri<:\q) includes all that most idealists would desire to 
 have included in the conception of that which art should 
 do. "Homer," says Aristotle (Chap. 2), "imitates better 
 men than exist," and again, in Chap. 25, "the poet," 
 he says, "being an imitator, like the painter or any other 
 artist, must, of necessity, always imitate one of three 
 things, — either such as they were or are; or such as they are 
 said to be or appear to be; or such as they ought to be" 
 (Thomas Taylor's translation). ... In art, imitation or 
 imaging is a means not an end, — a means of representing 
 through accurate imitations or images of external objects 
 that which is, or appears to be, or ought to be. This seems 
 to be the only fair interpretation to be put upon Aristotle's 
 word; and this interpretation reveals at once the depth and 
 the comprehensiveness of his aesthetic insight. — Art in 
 Theory y Appendix iii. 
 
 IMITATION OF THE ART-WORK OF OTHERS. 
 
 It is hard enough to produce a work of art which is 
 natural, when one models directly from nature. It is 
 well-nigh impossible to do so, when one models merely or 
 mainly from that which another man, however accurate 
 his eye, has seen in nature. The work of the imitator 
 will be as much inferior to the work of art after which he 
 models, as the latter is to nature's original. — Art in Theory , 
 III. 
 
 IMITATION, SOLELY, NOT THE AIM OF HIGH ART (see mention 
 
 of it under comparison composition, representation). 
 
 The aim of high art is never mere imitation; and the 
 
 truth of the statement is nowhere exemplified more clearly 
 
 than when applied to the use of color. Merely because 
 
 blue in the natural spectrum stands between green and 
 
172 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 purple, is no proof, as we shall find by-and-by, that a blue 
 object should be represented in a painting as standing next 
 to one that is green or violet. In the natural spectrum, as 
 in a natural scene, bounded by only the horizon, there are 
 other counteracting, balancing, or complementary influences 
 of color, which may render an effect entirely different from 
 that which alone is possible where a few colors are intro- 
 duced into the narrow limits of a picture. Besides this, 
 the mere association of certain hues in nature does not 
 make the arrangement beautiful; and, if not, art has no 
 business to reproduce it. For both reasons, it must always 
 be borne in mind that art deals with selected colors, just as 
 poetry and music deal with selected tones; and harmony 
 in all these arts, though discovered from a study of prin- 
 ciples in nature, is distinctively a human invention. — 
 Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xvii. 
 
 Art is the work of a man possessing more than merely 
 physical senses. The reason why he desires at all to con- 
 struct an art-form is because natural forms have produced 
 an effect upon his mind. And it is this effect that he wishes 
 to reproduce. If he can do it by mere imitation, well and 
 good; but there are many cases in which he cannot do it 
 thus. Yet even then, even in poetry, in which . . . the 
 imitative element is often very slight, who can fail to per- 
 ceive that, as in the "Voices of the Night" of Longfellow, 
 or the tragedies of Shakespeare, the effects of nature upon the 
 mind may be reproduced; that the reader or hearer feels 
 sad or joyous, weeps or laughs, precisely as he would, were 
 he, in natural life, to experience the actual moods or per- 
 ceive the actual events imaginatively presented to his con- 
 templation? A similar principle evidently applies also to 
 the products of painting, sculpture, and architecture. — 
 Art in Theory, I v. 
 
 IMITATION vs. REPRESENTATION IN ART {see also 
 REPRESENTATION IN ART VS. IMITATION). 
 
 So with the general line of thought in a poem. An 
 imitation so exact apparently that we should think it 
 written down within hearing, of the ravings of a mad 
 king, or of lamentations at the loss of a friend, would not 
 appeal to us like what we know to be merely representa- 
 tions of these in the blank verse of Shakespeare's **King 
 Lear," or in the rhyming verse of Tennyson's **In Memo- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 173 
 
 riam." The talk of the phonograph will never be an accept- 
 able substitute for the soliloquy or dialogue of the artistic 
 drama or novel. A like fact is true of the photograph. 
 For the very reason that it is an imitation, in the sense of 
 being a literal presentation, of every outline on which the 
 light at the time when it was taken happened to fall, it does 
 not awaken in us the kind or degree of imaginative inter- 
 est or of sympathy that we feel in paintings or statues. 
 In contrast to the impression received from a photo- 
 graph, in gazing at these, we feel that we are looking 
 through an artist's eye, seeing only what he saw or thought 
 fit for us to see, and that everything in them is traceable 
 to the skill displayed by him when transferring what in 
 nature is presented in one medium into another medium, as 
 when delineating flesh and foliage through the use of color 
 and when turning veins and lace into marble. — Essentials 
 of Esthetics, vi. 
 
 It is mainly owing to a lack of all appeal to the imagi- 
 nation or the sympathies, that accurate imitations of the 
 sounds that come from birds, beasts, winds, and waters fail 
 to affect us as do notes which are recognized to be produced 
 by wind and stringed instruments in the passages descrip- 
 tive of the influence of a forest, in Wagner's opera of " Sieg- 
 fried," or in the ''Pastoral Symphonies" of Handel and 
 Beethoven. Nor do any number of tones imitating exactly 
 the expressions of love, grief, or fright compare, in their 
 influence upon us, with the representations of the same in 
 the combined vocal and instrumental melodies and har- 
 monies of love songs, dirges, and tragic operas. The 
 truth of this may be more readily conceded in an art, like 
 music, perhaps, than in some of the other arts; for in it the 
 imitative elements are acknowledged to be at a minimum. 
 To such an extent is this the case, in fact, that some have 
 declared it to be presentative rather than representative, not 
 recognizing that a use of the elements of duration, force, 
 pitch, and quality, such as enables us to distinguish between 
 a love-song, a dirge, and a tragic passage, would altogether 
 fail to convey their meaning, unless there were something 
 in the effects to represent ideas or emotions which we were 
 accustomed to associate with similar effects as they are 
 presented in nature, especially as they are presented in natu- 
 ral speech. — Art in Theory, iv. 
 
174 ^^ ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 IMITATION, ITS USE IN MUSIC AND POETRY. 
 
 It is evident that the analogies between the general order 
 of series of sounds and the order of particular phases of 
 nature that they are intended to suggest, can be rendered 
 much more distinctly apprehensible by adding to what is 
 only generally representative by way of analogy that which 
 is specifically so by way of imitation. It would need but a 
 few imitative strokes of a drum, for instance, to make that 
 which might suggest either a storm or a battle, suggest one 
 of these rather than the other. In this regard, musical 
 forms correspond exactly to poetic forms. Some words are 
 representative because they suggest a similarity in under- 
 lying causes — like the word expressive^ derived as it is from 
 analogies between pressing one material substance out of 
 another material substance, and doing something similar 
 with a purely mental substance. Other words are repre- 
 sentative because they suggest a similarity in apparent 
 effects — ^like the imitative words **buzz" or ''crackle." 
 The same is true, too, of phrases and sentences. Some 
 are artistic because they recall an analogous series of rela- 
 tionships, and some because they also recall an analogous 
 series of sounds. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and 
 Music: Music as a Representative Art, viii. 
 
 IMITATION, WHY LITTLE, IN MUSIC AND ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 A symphony is constructed from a single significant series 
 of tones; and precisely in the same way a building is con- 
 structed from a single significant series of outlines, as in a 
 rounded or pointed arch. In both arts, however, there is 
 an occasional return to nature for the purpose of incorporat- 
 ing, if not imitating, in the product some new expression 
 of significance. But as both arts are developed, as will be 
 shown in the first chapter following, from a sustained and 
 subjective method of giving expression to a first suggestion, 
 a return to nature is much less frequent in them than in 
 the other arts. Poetry, being developed from the unsus- 
 tained and responsive methods of expression underlying 
 language, manifests a constant tendency to talk back and, 
 therefore, to mention and describe what has interrupted the 
 flow of thought and presented new thought. Painting and 
 sculpture, being developed from the same methods of expres- 
 sion, when underlying vision, manifest a constant tendency 
 to look back and, therefore, to imitate and depict what has 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS I75 
 
 interrupted the contemplation of one object of sight and 
 presented another. — Idem, Introduction to Music as a Rep- 
 resentative Art. 
 
 IMPRESSIONISM AS RELATED TO MUSIC. 
 
 Only since there has come to be a scientific study of the 
 philosophic reasons underlying the laws of musical har- 
 mony and composition — such a study as is exemplified in 
 the great work of Helmholtz on ** The Sensations of Tone " — 
 has there been a study of the effects of color-harmony and 
 composition of such a nature and with such a purpose as is 
 manifested in the painting of the modern impressionists. 
 — Essay on Music as Related to Other Arts. 
 
 IMPRESSIONISM, INFLUENCE OF, ON DRAWING. 
 
 An age of the paintings of impressionists, in which mere 
 patches of color would be considered all that was requisite 
 in order to enable the imagination to construct its own 
 contours for objects, would be an age in which drawing 
 would become a lost art. Here, as elsewhere, the truth 
 seems to lie between the extremes. And does not the sal- 
 vation of art as of life depend upon its fidelity to truth ? — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 XVI. 
 
 IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING (sce POETRY AS PICTORIAL). 
 
 The endeavor appears to be to influence the eye by means 
 of color aside from shapes in a way analogous to that 
 in which, in music, the ear is acknowledged to be influenced 
 by sounds aside from words. Is it possible to suppose 
 that such effects would ever have been attempted, if it had 
 not been for suggestions derived from music? It is inter- 
 esting to notice, too, that, when carried to excess, impres- 
 sionism, which may be described as painting influenced 
 by decorative motives, is apt to prove unsatisfactory owing 
 to neglect of the natural requirements of picturing in out- 
 line, in exactly the same way in which, as was pointed out 
 a moment ago, poetry, influenced by the musical motive, is 
 apt to prove unsatisfactory owing to its neglect of the 
 requirements of picturing in words. One can no more make 
 a thoroughly successful painting without lines that, at least, 
 suggest to the mind a very definite form than he can make 
 a thoroughly successful poem without words and phrases 
 that do the same. Nevertheless, just as the influence of 
 music on verse has been, in part, beneficial, so too has been 
 
176 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 its influence, so far as exerted, in the directions of which I 
 have been speaking, upon the use of pigments. The con- 
 ceptions which underlie modem impressionism will prob- 
 bably never cease to manifest themselves, and in ways, 
 too, perfectly legitimate to the art of painting. — Essay on 
 Music as Related to Other Arts. 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY, DISTINGUISHING THE PROSAIC FROM THE 
 
 POETIC. 
 
 One difference between the prosaic and the poetic, as 
 respectively illustrated in these passages, lies in the fact 
 that the former is devoid of any formative influence upon 
 the details mentioned produced by the intervening 
 human mind through which it has come to us, whereas of 
 the latter the contrary is true. The same should be true 
 of all products purporting to be those of art. No men 
 are great painters merely because they accurately repro- 
 duce the shapes or hues of nature; or great sculptors, 
 merely because they remould some ancient masterpiece, 
 or merely imitate in marble some modern living model. 
 It is the individuality of the effect characterizing the new 
 product that gives it artistic soul and life. In what con- 
 sists the difference between the artists living in Rome 
 to-day and the artisans who do their chiselling for them? 
 Is it not in this? — that the artists give form to their own 
 conceptions, while the artisans give form to the concep- 
 tions of their employers? — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, XIV. 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY IN ART {seC olso GENIUS and PERSONALITY). 
 
 The truth of art is surmised and embodied according to 
 the methods of imagination and expression pectdiar to the 
 temperament of one man; and it becomes the property of 
 all mainly on account of the individual influence of this man 
 whose intuitive impressions have been so accurate as to 
 recommend themselves to the aesthetic apprehensions, and 
 to enlist the sympathies, of those about him. — Idem. 
 
 INDIVIDUALITY MANIFESTED UNCONSCIOUSLY. 
 
 A moment's thought will enable us to recognize that 
 that which constitutes one's individuality often lies in traits 
 of which he is unaware. Or, if through a study of him- 
 self or of the opinion of the community he have become 
 aware of them, they are even then expressed, as a rule, 
 involuntarily. A man is never more thoroughly himself 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 177 
 
 than when so interested in something else as to forget him- 
 self. The Christ said that "he that loseth his life for my 
 sake shall find it." Wherefore shotdd not art affirm the 
 same? — Idem. 
 
 INFORMATION INCREASING ENJOYMENT OF ART {see also 
 
 EXPLANATIONS and literary). 
 An art-product appeals to a man as distinguished from 
 an animal. If so, the appeal must be made to that which 
 distinguishes him from the animal. This, of course, 
 is his intellect, together with the character and amount of 
 intelligence ascribable to it. But if this be so, an increase 
 of intelligence must increase his capacity for recognizing 
 the appeal of art. As applied to a particular art-product, 
 an increase of his intelligence with reference to either its 
 form or subject, must increase his capacity for enjoying 
 it. Nor need it make any essential difference whether 
 this intelligence be the result of his general information, 
 or of special information with reference to the object 
 immediately before him, such as he can derive from a 
 guide book. A man with a knowledge of history, how- 
 ever derived, will certainly take more interest in a paint- 
 ing like Raphael's "School of Athens". . . than will one 
 ignorant of history ; and a student of the Bible will take more 
 interest than will one ignorant of it in a painting like "The 
 Death of Ananias.". . . The degree of beauty is often 
 increased in the degree in which the number of effects enter- 
 ing into its generally complex nature is increased. This 
 is true even though some of these effects, as in the case 
 of forms conjured before the imagination by a verbal de- 
 scription, may come from a source which, considered in itself, 
 is not aesthetic. It must not be overlooked, however, that 
 all beauty whatever is a characteristic of form; and that 
 intellectual effects, like these explanations, to have an 
 aesthetic influence, must always be presented to apprehen- 
 sion in connection with an external form with which they 
 can be clearly associated. For this reason, though they 
 may add to the aesthetic interest, where it already exists, 
 they cannot, of themselves, make up for a lack of it. . . . 
 A picture cannot be all that a work of art should be, 
 unless, without one's knowing what the explanation is 
 designed to impart, the drawing and coloring can, in some 
 degree, at least, attract and satisfy aesthetic interest. . . . 
 
178 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 But the knowledge that we may get with reference to the 
 subject of a picture, enlarging, as this must do, its associa- 
 tions and suggestions, can add immensely to our distinc- 
 tively aesthetic enjoyment. In what consists the worth of 
 art except in the effects that it arouses in the emotions 
 and, through them, conjures in the imagination? But 
 by what is the reach of imagination determined, except 
 by the amount of information present in the mind with 
 reference to that by which the emotions have been 
 influenced? — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as 
 Representative Arts, xv. 
 
 INSPIRATION ANT) OBSERVATION, BOTH NEEDED IN ART. 
 
 The transcendentalists of New England who, fifty years 
 ago, were exercising the most pronounced of any effect upon 
 the art and literature of our country were constantly con- 
 founding artistic inspiration with religious inspiration. The 
 tendency of this mistake was not only to minimize in re- 
 ligion the importance of the spiritual, because this was 
 conceived to be the same in kind as the distinctively hu- 
 man in art; but to minimize in art also the importance 
 of the material, — i. e., of the material product as given form 
 through skill in technique, — because the whole desired 
 effect was conceived to be attained, as in religion, by merely 
 giving adequate and accurate expression to the results of 
 inspiration. Emerson himself, not only in his practice but 
 in his theory, almost always goes astray when he approaches 
 this subject of art-form. On the other hand, the followers 
 of the French, who, during the last twenty-five years, 
 have occupied in our country the position formerly occu- 
 pied by the transcendentalists, are constantly confounding 
 artistic observation with scientific observation; and the 
 tendency of their influence is not only to minimize in 
 science the importance of imaginative hypothesis as a pre- 
 requisite for the discovery of great underlying principles, 
 because they conceive that science has the same interest 
 in the mere appearances of nature that art has; but to 
 minimize in art also the importance of imaginative con- 
 struction embodying the great truths of analogy; because 
 they suppose the end to be attained in art, as in science, by 
 an accurate study of the facts of nature as they are, poems 
 or paintings being ranked according to the literal fidelity 
 with which they recall or imitate the details of that which 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 179 
 
 has been observed. — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, Preface. 
 
 INSPIRATION, ARTISTIC. 
 
 Just here, in fact, we come upon a philosophic, if not 
 scientific, warrant for that common opinion, so often held 
 without reasoning and expressed without discrimination, 
 that the products of art are to be ascribed to what is termed 
 inspiration. When we have traced them to this overflow 
 at the very springs of mental vitality, no one who thinks 
 can fail to feel that, if human life anywhere can come into 
 contact with the divine life, it must be here. There are 
 reservoirs behind the springs of the mountain-streams. 
 Are there none behind those of thought? And if there be, 
 what are they ? The answer to this question must depend, 
 of course, upon the general character of one's theologic or 
 philosophic conceptions. He may attribute that which he 
 calls inspiration directly and immediately to the divine 
 source of life. Or, recognizing the erroneous nature of the 
 forms in which truth, even when most unmistakably inspired, 
 is often presented, he may suppose that there are gradations 
 of intelligences beyond one's ken through which, even before 
 undergoing subjection to human limitations, the brightness 
 of the divine light, in order to become attempered to the 
 requirements of earthly conditions, loses not only its bril- 
 liancy but with this much of its defining power. Or he 
 may suppose that the soul itself comes into the world 
 stored with forces directly created for it, or else indirectly 
 acquired in a previous existence of which not only every 
 otherwise unaccountable intuition but every impulse is a 
 consequence, — a previous existence, which, if not human 
 and personal, may, at least, have existed as a psychic force 
 developing in the lower orders of life according to the 
 laws of psychic evolution through successive physical 
 forms, themselves developing according to the laws of 
 physical evolution. Or, finally, he may suppose that this 
 reservoir is in a man's own subconscious nature; and this, 
 again, he may suppose to be either psychical or physical. 
 With those whose tendencies are toward idealism, he may 
 deem the reservoir to be the receptacle of experiences in 
 his present state of existence, stored in the inner mind 
 with all their attendant associations and suggestions, and, 
 in accordance with some law, surging upward in order to 
 control thought and expression whenever, as in dreams 
 
i8o AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 or reveries, or abnormal states of trance or excitation, or 
 merely of poetic enthusiasm, the conscious will, for any 
 reason, is subordinated to the impulse coming from within. 
 Or, with those whose tendencies are more materialistic, 
 he may consider this subconscious nature to be the accu- 
 mulated result merely of that which, through physical 
 sensation, has come to be stored up in the nerve-cells and, 
 in circumstances similar to those just mentioned, aroused 
 to conscious vitality as a consequence either of intense 
 external stimulation, or of unusual activity in the nervous 
 centres. Whether a man incline to the acceptance of one 
 of these theories, or of a combination of them; however he 
 may account for what lies in the realm of mystery beyond 
 the art-impulse, it is evident that the theory just presented 
 of it can accord with every possible view. That, back of all 
 conscious intelligence, there is an unconscious intelligence of 
 some kind, in which the powers of memory and of deduction 
 are well-nigh, if not absolutely, perfect, the phenomena of 
 accident, disease, and hypnotism seem to have established 
 beyond all question. How, otherwise, could men with 
 memories naturally weak recall, as at times they do, in 
 abnormal conditions, whole conversations in a foreign 
 tongue with not one word of which they are consciously ac- 
 quainted ? Or how could those of the very slightest powers of 
 imagination or of logic, argue for hours, when in such states, 
 with superlative brilliancy and conclusiveness? Whatever 
 be the final explanation of these facts, in themselves — as 
 will be brought out clearly in the volume of this series treat- 
 ing of the nature of the thought that can be represented in 
 art — they cannot now be doubted. Behind conscious 
 mental life, sources exist of intellectual energy. They find 
 expression in many ways — in the words and deeds of ordi- 
 nary people, as well as in the extraordinary moods and 
 methods of prophets and reformers. But there is only one 
 department of activity which humanity appears to have 
 developed for the special purpose of giving expression — if 
 we may so say, of consciously giving material embodiment 
 — to that which has its source in these subconscious regions 
 of the mind; and this department of activity is art. — Art 
 in Theory, vii. 
 
 INSPIRATION, INFLUENCED BY ARTISTS* SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 In every age, of course, men of genius are prompted 
 instinctively, entirely aside from any knowledge that they 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS i8l 
 
 may have of aesthetic laws, to recognize and embody 
 aesthetic effects. But where are such men who fail to find 
 themselves surrounded by the products of their inferiors? 
 and who is able wholly to resist the influence of these? If 
 it be true that art, like religion, is fountained in inspiration, 
 it is true also that different sources of this differ in quality; 
 and that the stream which flows from the high region of 
 the masters has a purity not characterizing that which 
 rises in the low plane of their imitators. — The Genesis of 
 Art-Form, Preface. 
 
 INSPIRED, THE, AND THE ARTISTIC {see GENIUS). 
 
 When Mozart was three years old, he was giving con- 
 certs attended by the first musicians. When he was eight, 
 he had composed a symphony containing parts for a com- 
 plete orchestra. We ascribe such precocious results to 
 genius. But suppose that . . . after practising (like 
 Beethoven) five or six hours a day for ten or fifteen years, 
 he had produced the same, or approximately the same, 
 quality of music. In this case, we should have said that 
 his genius had been rendered able to express itself as a 
 result of his having acquired skill. . . . We should recog- 
 nize, too, that he never could have become able to do this, 
 unless that which he had studied and practised had, after 
 a time, passed from a region — so to speak — in which it 
 needed to be consciously overlooked, to a region where it 
 could be overlooked unconsciously. No man ever ac- 
 quired the skill of an artist until he could — automatically, 
 as it were — read printed notes, finger them, and harmo- 
 nize them, while reserving all his conscious energies for the 
 expression of the general thought and emotion. . . . 
 When a man's mind has naturally a tendency to act in 
 this way, we term him a genius ; but this tendency may 
 be greatly developed by the study of art. In fact, it 
 may be developed in some cases in which it is only 
 latent. Many find the strongest indication of the ge- 
 nius of Henry Ward Beecher in his marvelous illustrative 
 ability, in his imaginative facility in arguments from anal- 
 ogy. He himself, in his "Yale Lectures," says that, while 
 in later life it was as easy for him to illustrate as to breathe, 
 he did not have this power to any such extent in early 
 manhood, but cultivated it. Now, notice the inference from 
 what has just been said. If the subconscious powers of 
 
i82 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 mind that every man possesses operate like an automatic 
 machine, producing approximately perfect results of recol- 
 lection, imitation, illustration, and — as developed from the 
 premise submitted — of logic, then the problem of education 
 is how to cultivate the conscious powers of the mind so that 
 they shall be more and more pliant to the touch of subcon- 
 scious influence, and thus be enabled to manifest outwardly 
 that which is within one. The problem of expres- 
 sional art is how to cultivate the conscious agencies of 
 expression so that they shall respond automatically to the 
 promptings of the subconscious agencies. The musician has 
 always practically solved this problem when he is pouring his 
 whole soul into his music, unconscious of anything but the 
 emotional effect that he desires to produce upon the souls 
 of his hearers. The sculptor and the painter have alwaj^s 
 solved it, when they are projecting into line and color, un- 
 conscious of being hampered by any thought of technique, 
 that picture which keen observation of the outer world has 
 impressed upon their conceptions. The poet has always 
 solved it, when he has lost himself in his theme, uncon- 
 scious of anything except that to which Milton referred in 
 ** Paradise Lost," when he said that it 
 
 " Dictates to me slumbering or inspires 
 Easy my unpremeditated verse." 
 
 As intimated here, this state in which thoughts and emotions, 
 i. e.y mental forms, pass from the inner mind into external 
 material forms, through methods, of the details of which, at 
 the time of its action, the mind is unconscious, is the result 
 of what we sometimes term inspiration. But notice, too, 
 that it is often, even in cases of the most indisputable 
 genius, a result, in part at least, of acquired skill. There- 
 fore, the inspirational and the artistic are frequently exactly 
 the same in effect. — Essay on the Literary Artist and 
 Elocution. 
 
 INTONATIONS VS. ARTICULATIONS IN LANGUAGE. 
 
 Whatever may be true of words used separately, it is a fact 
 that, even aside from the conventional meanings ordinarily 
 attached to them, intonations, such as can be given only in 
 the movements of consecutive speech, have a significance. 
 When Bridget, according to a familiar story, was sent to 
 the neighbors to inquire how old Mrs. Jones was, she 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 183 
 
 emphasized the old, and paused after it, and so gave irrepar- 
 able offence. Her tones represented an idea which the mere 
 words of the message confided to her had not been intended 
 to convey. — Poetry as a Representative Art, i. 
 
 IRREGULARITY IN THE HUMAN COUNTENANCE (see also 
 
 COUNTENANCE and regularity). 
 This statement suggests an important principle of art 
 which needs to be noted here. It is that, sometimes, cer- 
 tain requirements of form have to be waived for the sake of 
 significance. We all are acquainted with this fact as applied 
 to paintings or statues containing two or more figures. 
 We often see one of these made positively irregular and 
 ugly, in order to offset, and thus enhance, the regularity 
 and beauty of the others. . . . The same principle is 
 applicable not only to groups of faces or figures, but, in each 
 of them, to groups of features. Irregularities in certain of 
 these, if not too pronounced, though they may be altogether 
 too decided to render possible any method of supposing them 
 to be regular, may add at times not only to the interest, 
 but even to the charm of the form in which they appear. 
 Like the stronger shading of a line or color that changes the 
 apparent condition of a factor for the purpose of emphasiz- 
 ing it, or of taking emphasis from some other adjacent 
 factor, they may thrust upon attention that which thus inter- 
 prets the meaning of the whole, and renders it in the highest 
 sense representative. The expression of mere individuality 
 alone necessitates having no two forms or faces in the world 
 exactly alike. Yet thousands of them may be equally 
 beautiful; and tens of thousands, though not equally beauti- 
 ful, may be equally attractive; while, to the student of 
 humanity, none can fail to be interesting. — Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, vi. 
 
 LABOR, NEEDED FOR ART-EXCELLENCE. 
 
 The results of art have not disproved that universal 
 principle according to which the degree of labor, medi- 
 ate or immediate, generally measures the degree of worth. 
 A bountiful exuberance of imagination usually accompanies 
 abounding information. The analogies of the poet are 
 usually most natural to the mind that has made the most 
 scrupulous study of nature. Truth, comprehensiveness, 
 and greatness, manifested in artistic products, are usually 
 crystallizations of the accuracy, breadth, and largeness of 
 
lS4 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 the formative thought occasioning them. — Essentials of 
 Esthetics, IV. 
 
 LANDSCAPE GARDENING, ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL 
 EFFECTS OF. 
 
 Where human intellect is supposed to have graded the 
 hillocks and cultivated the lawns, neither of these can 
 appropriately present too great an appearance of ruggedness 
 or unculture. Lakes that are acknowledged to be the results 
 of contrivance should not seem swamps, nor should streams 
 that are made to flow into them seem sluggish. Trees 
 that have been transplanted should not appear illy selected 
 as to sizes, nor illy arranged as to groups or rows. Walks 
 that every one knows to have been planned, however adroit- 
 ly they may be adjusted to the conformations of the land, 
 should never violate the mathematical laws controlling the 
 formation of curves; nor should flowers that have been 
 placed in beds be disposed otherwise as to sizes and colors 
 than in a manner suited to produce effects that are aesthetic. 
 
 On the other hand, the artist, while striving to avoid the 
 tendency just mentioned, can scarcely be too cautious in 
 his endeavor to guard against infidelity to such effects 
 as may be supposed to have developed naturally. It is 
 possible to grade the land so that the outlines and positions 
 of mounds, lawns, and lakes shall seem too much the pro- 
 ducts of design. The trees may be too nearly of a size, and 
 arranged with too great regularity. If in addition, as in 
 some French gardens, they be clipped in order to seem uni- 
 form, or be made to imitate tents, spires, or what-not that a 
 man may fancy, or if they be ranged like fence-poles about 
 walks suggesting nothing but a square and compasses, 
 or stuck into the edges of flower-beds, wherein all the colors 
 are as carefully matched as in the mats of a French parlor, 
 then, while artifice has had its perfect work, nature may 
 seem to have been so painfully distorted and misrepresented 
 that the result has been the death of her. — The Representa- 
 tive Significance of Form, xxiv. 
 
 Applying these ideas to landscape-gardening, it is simply 
 a fact recognized by all, that any given plot may be so 
 graded and laid out that hills and valleys, lawns and lakes, 
 avenues and flower-beds, shall appear to be the results of 
 nature as much as of artifice. In the degree in which such 
 is the case, landscape-gardens may be said to suggest effects 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 185 
 
 in time. And yet if, in connection with these, there be 
 no evidences that the results perceived were contrived and 
 constructed through an exercise of ingenuity and skill; if, 
 in other words, there be no evidences of a human mind 
 which, accepting certain natural features of landscape as 
 developed in time, has given unity to the whole in space, 
 and this as a result of thinking, — then manifestly the 
 landscape will not appear artistic. — Idem. 
 
 LANDSCAPE GARDENING, AS INFLUENCED BY OTHER ARTS. 
 
 What but a subtle tendency to imitate the effects of draw- 
 ing or of painting could lead to the mathematical straight- 
 ness or stiffness apparent often in the arrangements of 
 walks and plants, and of outlines in artificial ponds, and even 
 of forms and colors in flower-beds? Or what but a con- 
 founding of this art with sculpture or architecture could 
 result in that which so offends good taste in many gardens, 
 — the crowding together of plaster statues, waterless foun- 
 tains, riverless bridges, and arbors whereon the sun never 
 shines, clipped out and bent out of trees that would have 
 seemed beautiful if only left in their natural condition? 
 No wonder that they appear artificial! — Idem, xxvii. 
 
 LANGUAGE, ARTISTIC, NEEDS CULTIVATING. 
 
 At a recent centennial celebration of one of our colleges, a 
 professorial friend of mine was seated next to a scientist. 
 They were listening to a brilliant speech from a prominent 
 clergyman. The scientist was to follow. Before he did so, 
 he made a disparaging remark, indicating that he felt that 
 he should be commended because he could not, and would 
 not, attempt anything resembling what had immediately 
 preceded. My friend in repeating his remark indicated 
 that he also agreed with the scientist in this self -commenda- 
 tion. Neither, apparently, was able to perceive his own 
 limitations sufficiently even to regret them. ... Is it neces- 
 sary to argue that when such sentiments prevail and are 
 expressed by those who desire to make themselves popular, 
 no great efforts will be expended upon the methods of pre- 
 senting thought; and if so, that no high standards will be 
 reached in the spheres peculiar to literature, whether of 
 prose or of poetry? You cannot expect art to be mani- 
 fested in the use of language in any college or country 
 where there is general disparagement of endeavors to make 
 language artistic. — Essay on Fundamentals in Education. 
 
i86 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 LANGUAGE, AS FORMED INSTINCTIVELY AND REFLECTIVELY. 
 
 The earliest sounds made by a babe are instinctive, by 
 which is meant, that they are allied in nature to expressions 
 of instinct, due, even in a rational being, to the operation 
 less of conscious rationality than of natural forces vitalizing 
 all sentient existence. These instinctive sounds seem to 
 be accepted as words in fulfilment, mainly, of the principle 
 of association. The child cries and crows while the mother 
 hums and chuckles, and both understand each other. They 
 communicate through what may be termed ejaculations 
 or interjections. This kind of language is little above the 
 level of that of the brutes; in fact, it is of the same nature as 
 theirs. The sounds seem to have a purely musctilar or nerv- 
 ous origin ; and for this reason may be supposed to have no 
 necessary connection with any particular thought or psychic 
 state intended to be expressed by them. Nevertheless, we 
 all understand the meanings of them when produced by the 
 lower animals, as well as when made by man. Everywhere, 
 certain ejaculations are recognized to be expressive of the 
 general tenor of certain feelings, as of pleasure and pain 
 desire and aversion, surprise and fright. This fact shows 
 that there is a true sense in which these utterances are 
 representative. 
 
 The principle of association in connection with the use 
 of natural exclamations accounts probably for the origin 
 not only of actual interjections, but of other sounds also, 
 like the sibilants, aspirates, and gutturals, giving their 
 peculiar qualities to the meanings of syllables like those 
 in shoo, hist, and kick. Some, too, think that it accounts 
 for the origin of words like is, me, and that, cognate with 
 the Sanskrit, as, ma, and ta; the first meaning to breathe, 
 and indicating the act of breathing; the second closing 
 the lips to shut off outside influence, and thus to refer to 
 self; and the third opening the lips to refer to others. In 
 the same way, too, because the organs of speech are so 
 formed that the earliest articulated sound made by a babe 
 is usually either mama or papa, and the earliest persons to 
 whom each is addressed are the mother and father, people 
 of many different races have come to associate mama, 
 which, as a rule, is uttered first, with an appeal to the 
 mother, and papa with an appeal to the father. 
 
 In order, however, that utterances springing from exclam- 
 ations may be used in language, it is evident that men must 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 187 
 
 begin to imitate them, which they can do as a result only 
 of comparison. This principle, therefore, as well as that of 
 association, must have been closely connected with the 
 formation of the earliest words. Ejaculations, as has been 
 said, are instinctive. As such, they come first in the order 
 of time. The imitations of them with the purpose of mak- 
 ing them accepted as words do not appear till the reflective 
 nature begins to assert itself and then they soon extend to 
 the reproduction of other sounds besides ejaculations — 
 sounds that are representative of natural effects external to 
 man, and that become accepted as words as a still more 
 immediate result of comparison. These latter sounds are 
 first heard when the child is led to notice external objects. 
 Then, unlike the animal which can only ejaculate, but just 
 like his reputed father Adam, the first who had a reflective 
 nature, he begins to give names to these objects, or to have 
 names given to them for him by others. These names, ac- 
 cording to the methods controlling the formation of nursery 
 language, are always based upon the principle of imitation. 
 Certain noises emanating from the objects designated, 
 the chick-chick of the fowl, the tick-tick of the watch, the 
 cuckoo of the bird over the clock, the how-wow of the dog, 
 and, later, the clatter of the rattle, or the rustle of the silk or 
 satin, are imitated in the names applied to them; and 
 this imitative element enables the child to recognize what 
 the object is to which each name refers. The existence 
 of hundreds of terms in all languages, the sounds of which 
 are significant of their sense, like buzz, hiss, crash, slam, 
 bang, whine, howl, roar, bellow, whistle, prattle, twitter, 
 gabble, and gurgle (many of which are of comparatively 
 recent origin), is a proof that the principle of imitation is 
 an important factor in the formation of words. — Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, i. 
 
 LANGUAGE, ITS EARLIEST FORM. 
 
 This theory, that the very earliest words were ejacula- 
 tory and imitative, seems to accord with the commonly 
 accepted view, that language is a gift from God, recogniz- 
 ing it to be so in the sense that, whereas beasts and birds 
 are endowed with the power of representing only a few 
 sensations through a few almost unvarying sounds, man 
 can represent any number of thoughts and emotions 
 through articulating organs capable of producing almost 
 
i88 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 infinite combinations and variations. Place two human 
 beings, thus constituted, in a state like that of Eden, and 
 in a month's time, by using ejaculatory and imitative 
 utterances, and mutually agreeing, as they necessarily 
 would do, to associate certain ideas with certain of these, 
 they would form a primitive language, which both could 
 understand; and a number of their words, too, would 
 probably not be wholly dissimilar in either sound or sense 
 to some that we use to-day. — Poetry as a Representative Art, i. 
 
 LANGUAGE, PLAIN AND FIGURATIVE (see POETRY, ITS LAN- 
 GUAGE, REPRESENTATION IN POETRY, and WORDS). 
 
 Plain language, as we have traced it, is a development of 
 the instinctive methods of expression used in natural 
 ejaculations. These, by being associated with the circum- 
 stances in which they are uttered, come to be used as 
 words; and, in a broad way of generalizing, there is a 
 sense in which all words, no matter how originated, when- 
 ever they come to mean what they do on account of this 
 principle, can be put into this class. But now, if we think 
 a little, we shall recognize that, from the moment of the 
 utterance of the first ejaculation to the use of the latest 
 sound which means what it does merely because conven- 
 tionally associated with an idea to which it stands in the 
 relation of an arbitrary symbol, the tendency exemplified 
 is a desire to present rather than to represent the thought 
 or feeling. 
 
 Just the contrary, however, is true of figurative lan- 
 guage. We have traced it to a development of the reflec- 
 tive methods of expression which arise when one hears and 
 imitates for a purpose the sounds about him. The same 
 tendency is carried out when he puts these sounds together, 
 after they have become conventional words, so as to 
 represent the relations between the sights about him, as 
 in the terms express, understand: in fact, it is carried out in 
 every case in which there is a use of imaginative or figura- 
 tive language. This latter language, then, from its earliest 
 source to its utmost development, exemplifies a tendency 
 to represent rather than merely to present the thought or 
 feeling. 
 
 But we have not yet reached the whole truth with refer- 
 ence to the matter. It must be remembered that thus far 
 we have been dealing mainly with single words, or with a 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 189 
 
 few of them arranged in single sentences. Each of these 
 words or sentences may be supposed to express some sin- 
 gle phase or process of the mind's experiences. But to 
 express a series of these processes, as words usually do 
 when used at all, we need a series of words and sentences. 
 Now it is conceivable that, though each factor of the series 
 when taken by itself should merely present some single 
 phase, all the factors when taken together should represent 
 a series of these phases; and it is equally conceivable that 
 though each factor of the series when taken by itself should 
 represent a mental phase, all the factors when taken to- 
 gether should merely present a series of these phases. In 
 other words, it is conceivable that owing to the artistic use, 
 not of single words but of series of them, plain language 
 should represent the thought and feeling (as in "Home 
 they brought her Warrior " in Tennyson's " Princess "), 
 and therefore be poetic; and it is equally conceivable that 
 figurative language (as in oratory) should present, and there- 
 fore be prosaic; prose, so far as it is determined by the 
 mode of communicating thought, being the presentative 
 form of that of which poetry is the representative. 
 
 These conditions which we have considered conceiv- 
 able, we shall find to be true in fact; and for this reason 
 poetic methods of treating a subject considered as a 
 whole must be judged, precisely as was said in another 
 place of poetic sounds, by the degree in which they repre- 
 sent the thought or feeling to which they give expression. 
 Now what, in the last analysis must determine the method 
 of the communication? — what but the method in which 
 the thought itself is conceived in the mind of the writer? 
 If he think in pictures, his words, whether or not pictur- 
 esque or figurative in themselves, will describe pictures. 
 Otherwise they will not. Moreover, if we reflect a moment, 
 we shall recognize that there are many times when he can 
 think in pictures, even when he is not thinking of pictures; 
 as, for instance, when he is impressing a truth upon the mind 
 through using a story, a parable, or an illustration, as we 
 call it. In this case, his method, if it accurately convey 
 to us that which is passing before his own mind, must be 
 representative, and not merely presentative. 
 
 Accordingly we find, when we get to the bottom of our 
 subject, that the figurative or the representative element 
 in poetry may exist in the conception as well as in the 
 
I90 AN ART-PHILOSOPHEKS CABINET 
 
 phraseology. If it exist in only the conception, we have 
 representation in plain language, or direct representation; 
 if in the phraseology, by which is meant now the words or 
 expressions illustrating the main thought, we have repre- 
 sentation m figurative language, or illustrative representation. 
 If all the significance expressed in a passage be represented, 
 the form of the representation will in this work be termed 
 pure; if a part of the thought be merely presented, the 
 representation will be termed alloyed; and in the degree in 
 which this is the case, it will be shown by and by that the 
 whole is prosaic. 
 
 Pure representation is pictorial in character, as we should 
 expect from the pictorial tendency of which we have found 
 it to be an outgrowth, and its methods are not wholly unlike 
 those of painting. When composing in accordance with 
 them, the poet indicates his thought by using words refer- 
 ring to things that can be perceived; and in this way he 
 causes the imaginations of those whom he addresses to per- 
 ceive pictures. Alloyed representation, while following in 
 the main the methods of that which is pure, always contains 
 more or less of something which cannot be supposed to have 
 been perceived, at least not in connection with circum- 
 stances like those that are being detailed. For this reason, 
 that which is added to the representation is like alloy, inter- 
 fering with the pureness and clearness of the pictures pre- 
 sented to the imaginations of those addressed. It appeals 
 to them not according to the methods of poetry, but of 
 science or philosophy, or of any kind of thought addressed 
 merely to the logical understanding. 
 
 The distinction between pure and alloyed representa- 
 tion lies at the basis of all right appreciation of poetic 
 effects. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xix. 
 
 The object of language is to cause others to share our men- 
 tal processes, to communicate to them the substance of 
 our ideas and their associated feelings. In doing this, it 
 represents both what a man has observed in the external 
 world and what he has experienced in his own mind — not 
 in either the one or the other, but invariably in both of them. 
 If a man, for instance, show us a photograph of something 
 that he has seen, he holds before our eyes precisely what has 
 been before his own eyes; but if he describe the scene in 
 words, he holds before our mind only those parts of it that 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 19I 
 
 have attracted his attention ; and not only so, but added to 
 these parts many ideas and emotions of his own that were 
 not in the scene but occurred to him when viewing it. 
 
 A similar added element from the man's mind accompan- 
 ies every endeavor of his to tell what he has heard, or even, 
 at some other time, thought or felt. From these facts, it 
 follows that the aim of language, so far as this can be deter- 
 mined by what it actually and necessarily does, is to 
 cause the same effects to be produced in the hearer's mind 
 that are experienced in the speaker's mind. Now if one, 
 when talking, conceive that this is an easy aim to attain; 
 that what he has heard or seen or thought or felt, needs only 
 to be told in clear, intelligible phraseology, in order to pro- 
 duce in another the same effects as in himself, then he will 
 be content with conventional modes of expression; he will 
 use in the main plain language. 
 
 On the other hand, if a man conceive that the end at 
 which he is aiming is difficult to attain; that what he has 
 heard, or seen, or thought, or felt, either on account of its 
 own nature, or of the nature of those whom he is addressing, 
 is hard for them to realize in its full force, and with all its 
 attendant circumstances, then, as his object is to convey not 
 merely an apprehension but a comprehension, both complete 
 and profound, of that of which he has to speak, he will dwell 
 upon it ; he will repeat his descriptions of it ; he will tell not 
 only what it is, but what it is like ; in other words, he will try 
 to produce the desired effect, by putting extra force into 
 his language, and, in order to do this, inasmuch as the 
 force of language is increased by becoming representative, 
 he will augment the representation by multiplying his 
 comparisons; his language will become figurative. It will 
 be so for the same reason that the language of a savage 
 or a child, even when giving utterance to less occult ideas, 
 is figurative, — because he feels that the words at his com- 
 mand are inadequate to express or impress his meaning 
 completely. — Idem, xviii. 
 
 LAW, ART AS SUBJECT TO {seC also MUSIC AS RELATED TO 
 
 law). 
 In the degree in which the conclusions reached are accu- 
 rate, and appeal as such to the reader's judgment, it will 
 make evident that the effects for which the artist seeks are 
 due to laws that operate far more inflexibly than sometimes 
 
192 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 is supposed; it will suggest that originality, while wider in 
 its scope than those imagine who confound the methods of 
 the master-artists with their manner, has too its limits; and 
 it will reveal beyond a doubt why many works of so-called 
 art produced to-day, because devoid of almost every ele- 
 ment of art, can never be of permanent interest, as well as 
 why, for reasons just the opposite, so many of those that are 
 now the classics of the past have charms that never can be 
 lost. — The Genesis of Art- Form, Preface. 
 
 LIKE WITH LIKE (see dlso comparison). 
 
 Imagination is the source of all art-production. When 
 a man begins to find in one feature the image of another, 
 and, because the two are alike, to put them together by 
 way of comparison, then, and then only, does he begin to 
 construct an art-product. And not only so, but only then 
 does he continue his work in a way to make it continue to be 
 a medium of expression. The forms which he elaborates 
 are naturally representative of certain phases of thought 
 or feeling, and the significance of the completed product 
 depends upon its continuing to represent these phases. 
 But it can continue to do this only when that which is 
 added in the process of elaboration is essentially like 
 that with which the process starts. ... As a fact, however, 
 no two things are alike in all regards; and the mind must 
 content itself with putting together those that are alike 
 in some regards. — The Genesis of Art- Form, ii. 
 
 literary, a term applied to pictures {see also explana- 
 tions and information). 
 Suppose that, for the reason which Lessing gave when 
 he said that it should present only that which could be 
 perceived at one time, or for any other reason, the pic- 
 ture is not able to interpret itself. Then it needs an expla- 
 nation. Such an explanation is necessarily made in words, 
 and, often, in printed words. Words, whether printed or 
 not, are the substance of literature. A painting which 
 cannot be of interest until one is made acquainted with 
 the literature of the subject, until one has read or heard 
 the words of a story which it is supposed to illustrate — • 
 what is this? — What, but a painting which may be said 
 to owe its interest to literature; and in this sense a paint- 
 ing that is "literary.". . . The term *'Hterary," as one of 
 disparagement, is rightly applied to pictures that need to be 
 

 Church of St. Mark, Venice 
 
 !"■ 1.^1 -J 8 ■-^WiSi ^ 5_-" •-;••'•-: -\-^"--:--^^»i^»|TnM|ff 
 
 Old Picture of St. Sophia, Constantinople 
 See pages q, io, 1$, IQ, 73^ Si-8s, 89, 91, 223-225, 316, 385 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 193 
 
 interpreted by a verbal story; in other words to pictures that 
 do not represent their own story. But is this what is meant 
 by those who, in our own time, most use the term? No; 
 but often the opposite. The term is applied to pictures that 
 do represent their own story; and because they do this. 
 Thus a deduction from Lessing's principle is made in order 
 to disparage the very kind of pictures that he would have 
 commended. Nor is it the first time that inability to inter- 
 pret the spirit of a law beneath the letter of it has caused 
 the disciples of a master to suppose themselves to be fol- 
 lowing his lead, when they are going in diametrically the 
 opposite direction. — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture 
 as Representative Arts, xiii. 
 
 Human minds, as a rule, have so narrow an outlook that 
 they can be depended upon to snatch a half-truth, if possible, 
 and use it as a weapon against the whole truth. Whatever 
 may have been the case in the past, an artist at the present 
 time cannot compose upon the theory that significance is 
 essential to the highest excellence in art without being 
 stigmatized by certain critics as "literary"; nor can he 
 compose upon the theory that imitative skill is essential to 
 the highest excellence without being stigmatized by cer- 
 tain other critics as being "a mere technicist. " 
 
 Of course, in some cases the use of these designations 
 is appropriate; and, in all cases, it is easy to trace their 
 genesis, and find some justification for them. To inveigh 
 against the literary tendency in this art is a perfectly nat- 
 ural reaction against an attempt on the part of certain 
 English and German artists of the early part of the last cen- 
 tury, like West and Overbeck, not only to revive religious 
 symbolic and allegoric painting, but to do this, apparently, 
 upon the supposition that a subject capable of being made 
 impressive by an elaborate explanation, or story indi- 
 cating its intention, can compensate for an indifferent 
 style, an idea subsequently developed by the English Pre- 
 Raphaelites and in the genre pictures of the followers of Von 
 Schadow at Dusseldorf. On the other hand, to inveigh 
 against exclusive attention to technique is an equally 
 natural reaction against the exceedingly tame and unim- 
 aginative effects produced by mere imitation, such as 
 we find in many of the French pictures. No amount of 
 care expended upon the portrayal of tint or texture in 
 foliage, clothing, or flesh can satisfy the artistic ideals 
 
 X3 
 
194 ^^ ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 of certain minds. They refuse to admit that great art 
 can ever result from any possible elaboration of small 
 subjects. — Idem, xii. 
 
 LITERARY STYLE IN ART-CRITICISM. 
 
 That which was undertaken in these volumes did not seem 
 to permit of a method that might have proved far more 
 pleasurable both for author and for reader. How can 
 one get down to the roots of anything, so long as he persists 
 in making his chief aim the enjoyment of its flowers? Our 
 libraries are full of treatises upon art appealing to the 
 imagination. The series of volumes which this concludes 
 has been intended to appeal to the understanding. We 
 may exercise imagination and go astray, in case we fail to 
 exercise the understanding also. But so long as we are 
 really using the latter, whether as artists or critics, we are 
 much less likely to go astray, however imaginative. To 
 understand a subject completely, one must be led to analyze 
 it, and to perceive its minutest details. Details that are 
 minute require minuteness in presentation. Your small 
 matter may be as effectually lost in generalities of style 
 as a needle in a dust-heap. Or, as applied to considerations 
 of a broader character, one cannot manifest the coolness 
 needed in a philosophic presentation, through a manner 
 aglow with the heat of fancy; nor accurately balance prin- 
 ciples in the scale of argument, when allowing either side 
 of it to be borne up or down by a bias of sentiment. — 
 Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 LITERATURE AND SERIOUS THOUGHT. 
 
 "From time to time, " says Oscar Wilde, **the world cries 
 out against some charming, artistic poet, because, to use its 
 hackneyed and silly phrase, he has 'nothing to say.' It is 
 just because he has no new message that he can do 
 beautiful work." Think of the literary prospects of a country 
 or of the world; of the possibility of its receiving any 
 inspiring impulses from its poets at a period when new 
 authors, writing with the acknowledged motives of Dante, 
 Milton, or Wordsworth, would, for this and for no other 
 reason, fail to commend themselves to the leaders of literary 
 opinion ! — Essentials of Esthetics, v. 
 
 LYRIC {see also dramatic, epic, realistic). 
 A lyric represents a movement imparted to the thoughts, 
 but, unlike the condition in a melody, the thoughts of the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 195 
 
 lyric appear in definite form. It is these thoughts that, 
 according to their order of sequence, reveal the tendency 
 which impels them. — Art in Theory, xvii. 
 
 LYRIC CRY. 
 
 The term lyric cry is often used by critics. What does 
 this indicate except a recognition that, in this form of poetry, 
 the soul, as in the case of one crying out in excitement, is 
 over-mastered by the impulse from within. Yet there is 
 little suggestion that the thought or emotion, as in the epic 
 condition, is absolutely too great to be adequately expressed. 
 There is often a suggestion of the opposite. Judging of the 
 persons who cry loudest, and of the circumstances in which 
 they do so, it might be argued that this form of expression, 
 as a rule, exaggerates the amount and quality of the experi- 
 ence; and this is the condition in dramatic art. — The Repre- 
 sentative Significance of Form, xix. 
 
 LYRIC POETRY {sCC VERSE AN ELEMENT). 
 
 ^ Just as, through a few outlines, a good draughtsman gives 
 us a conception of a whole form, so the lyric poet, through 
 a few words, gives us a conception of a whole series of 
 scenes or events. But in the lyric these few words do 
 more than represent, as in realistic art, what exists or may 
 be supposed to exist. They create something that with- 
 out them would not exist. They give apprehensible form 
 to impressions made upon thought and feeling. . . . The 
 aesthetic interest awakened by the following is an interest 
 not in any great idea illustrated nor in successive events 
 accurately detailed, but in the form which the writer has 
 constructed in order, through it, to represent the particu- 
 lar character of the emotional effects which, owing to his 
 own poetic sensibilities, he himself has, or may be sup- 
 posed to have, experienced. — Idem. 
 
 MODELS, HUMAN, AND THEORIES OF PROPORTION {see also 
 OBSERVATION VS. THEORY, and SCULPTURE, GREEK). 
 
 It is impossible to find rules for guidance which, as used 
 in particular cases, do not constantly need to be authenti- 
 cated and modified by the facts that can be learned from 
 studying models. All art is the representation of nature. 
 The art that portrays human nature represents that which 
 is, presumably, the highest embodiment of creative intelli- 
 gence. A man who tries, after no matter how faithful a 
 study of the human form in general, to create such a form 
 
196 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 de novo, is in danger of representing his own conceptions to 
 the detriment both of nature and of that creative intelli- 
 gence which gives human nature its highest significance. 
 As indicated on page 89, a knowledge of proportion can 
 do little more than enable an artist, in the presence of 
 models, to select for portrayal features that are beautiful, 
 and, where these are combined with such as are not, to 
 avoid copying the latter, or, if he must regard them, then, 
 as a result of observation and experience, to correct their 
 defects. To do this last satisfactorily, however, or even 
 to choose a model wisely, requires that an artist's judgment 
 should be regulated by some correct general theory. . . . 
 Such a theory may afford equal aid, too, when one is called 
 upon to form practical or theoretical judgments with refer- 
 ence to mere posture. . . . There is no doubt that, when 
 limbs are arranged so that their combined outlines suggest 
 these like curves, the effect of beauty is enhanced on account 
 largely of their influence in producing effects not only of 
 harmony of outline, but of proportion. — Proportion and 
 Harmony of Line and Color, viii. 
 
 MORALITY, AS INFLUENCED BY ANY ART. 
 
 The novel, the drama, the painting, the statue, — all re- 
 port, with more or less interpretative additions, that which 
 keen observers have been able to perceive, and to reproduce. 
 The legitimate effect of their work is to enlarge the experi- 
 ence of others who have not had the same opportunity, or 
 the same ability to avail themselves of it, that they them- 
 selves have had. Whoever enlarges another's experience 
 imparts not only information, but, with it, something of 
 that wisdom which expresses itself in intelligent action. 
 Of course much depends, as has already been intimated, 
 upon the artist through whose mediumship the wider 
 experience has been imparted. He is like a showman 
 who may throw upon a screen whatever sort of picture 
 he may select. At the same time, in making his selection, 
 he can scarcely fail to be influenced by another fact. It is 
 this, — that only in the degree in which men conceive that 
 his thought when assuming form in art is in harmony with 
 thought when assuming form in nature, do they conceive 
 him to be influenced by the spirit in nature to such an extent 
 as to term him inspired. Is there any great artist who does 
 not wish to have his work considered to be of this character? 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 197 
 
 Or, if an artist be not great, does he not try, at least, to 
 imitate those who are so, and prefer to be considered of their 
 class ? If both these questions can be answered in the affirm- 
 ative, then it must be true that, practically, in the majority 
 of cases, the forces that are working in nature, as most of 
 us believe, for the enlightenment and uplifting of man will 
 continue to be influential in directing toward the same ends 
 the developments of art. — Essay on Art and Morals. 
 
 Nothing influences the general conceptions of a com- 
 munity more than the specific conceptions suggested by 
 what seems true of its art. This cannot manifest disre- 
 gard of law without cultivating more or less disregard of 
 the same in life, whether individual, social, political, or 
 religious. There is a connection between thinking that 
 anybody, without any guidance of rules, can write a suc- 
 cessful poem, or build a successful house, and fancying that 
 a promoter on Wall Street can disregard the financial laws 
 of the street, and not do something toward bringing on a 
 financial panic; or that a lady of the "Four Hundred" can 
 turn her back upon her poor relations, violating thus the 
 laws of both humanity and hospitality, and not do some- 
 thing toward making them turn their backs upon her, even 
 to the extent, possibly, of causing them to enlist for a social- 
 istic revolution ; or that a statesman, trusting to his own per- 
 sonal popularity or eloquence, can ignore the laws of 
 diplomacy and the enactments of his predecessors, and not 
 do something to endanger the peace and procperity of his 
 country; or that a leader in the Church, under the impres- 
 sion that all that religion needs can be developed from his 
 own unaided self -consciousness, can break away from the 
 laws of form or purpose embodying the historic results 
 of the spiritual life of the past, and not do something to 
 develop from himself the very evils that religion and its 
 methods are intended to prevent. — Essay on Music as 
 Related to Other Arts. 
 
 Art is one thing, and morality is another thing. A statue, 
 a picture, a drama, or a dance, may be immoral in its 
 influence, and yet artistic. But, in this case, it is seldom 
 artistic in every one of its features. If it were, people 
 would not speak of it, as some invariably do, when referring 
 to products of this character, as "lacking in good taste." — 
 Essay on Art and Morals. 
 
198 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 MORALITY, AS INFLUENCED BY ARCHITECTURE 866 alsO AR- 
 CHITECTURE, EXPRESSIVE OF CHARACTER and SKYSCRAPERS). 
 
 Are there any ethical relations of architecture: and if so, 
 are moral principles exemplified in it? Both questions can 
 be answered in the affirmative. Consider, for instance, 
 the modern skyscraper, — the apartment house, hotel, or 
 office building containing twenty or thirty stories. Sociolo- 
 gists point out how objectionable it is morally, as used 
 in residence districts, either for irrepressible children who 
 need more companions out of doors, or for disaffected 
 parents who need fewer of them indoors; and how objec- 
 tionable physically, as used in business districts, because 
 depriving thousands of sunlight and fresh air, and increasing 
 the nervous strain of life by crowding streets and street- 
 cars, and adding to the labors of business, the greater 
 labor of trying to get in safety, comfort, and health, despite 
 lungs almost suffocated, to and from one's home. But, 
 long before the sociologist had thought of these results, the 
 artist had realized the beauty of a uniform skyline, as in the 
 streets of Paris and the Court of Honor at the Chicago 
 Exposition ; and had recognized as well the inexcusable les- 
 sening in value, because of depreciation in effectiveness, of 
 every building that another adjoining it is allowed to over- 
 top. So one might go on and give to the principle thus 
 illustrated almost universal applicability. — Essay on Art 
 and Morals. 
 
 MORALITY, AS INFLUENCED BY DRAMAS (5^^ PLAY, DRAMATIC). 
 
 As for the other criterion, namely, that art should point 
 a moral, this is accurate so far as it goes ; and yet at, imita- 
 tive art, must do more than point a moral. Its nature is 
 that of representation, not reasoning; it presents a picture 
 to be perceived, not a problem to be solved; and the repre- 
 sentation, the picture, not the reasoning or the solution, is 
 that in it which is of supreme importance. — The Represen- 
 tative Significance of Form, xv. 
 
 MORALITY, AS INFLUENCED BY POETRY. 
 
 Very often passages like this merely add to the impres- 
 siveness of the picture conjured before the imagination, 
 and are distinctly within the limits of an appeal to senti- 
 ment. For this reason, though having much to do both 
 with influencing conduct and imparting information, they 
 are legitimate to art, because subordinated to its aims. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 199 
 
 This is a fact important to recognize. Indeed, the failure 
 to recognize it is one of the artistic mistakes of our own 
 age; and is doing more than any other, perhaps, to pre- 
 vent art from attaining the rank due to it, as a great in- 
 strumentality for the betterment of humanity. In the 
 criticisms in our papers — often, owing to an affectation of 
 aesthetic knowledge, in our religious papers, — one finds 
 an almost universal tendency to discount, and for this 
 reason solely, poetry, painting, and statuary that give any 
 marked evidence of being the product of an earnest, ethi- 
 cal, or religious nature. One reason — though, of course, 
 not by any means the sole reason — why certain of our 
 greater as well as minor pessimistic poets, whose influence 
 is anything but inspiring, are so lavishly praised, is because 
 they give so few indications of having such a nature; 
 and it is certain that many critics of the drama would 
 think twice before imperiling their reputation by object- 
 ing to a really artistically constructed play merely because 
 of its immoral tendency. Yet what can be more thor- 
 oughly unphilosophical than to gauge artistic ability and 
 taste by an absence of those traits which, in ordinary 
 life, give a man not only character but common sense? — 
 Idem. 
 
 MORALITY, AS INFLUENCING ART. 
 
 We respect a moral man who is a boor; but when there 
 is enough of aesthetics in him to make him also a gentleman, 
 we admire him, and strive to imitate him. We tolerate 
 earnest reformers who, in rowdy mobs, boisterously insult 
 all who differ from them; but most of us connect ourselves 
 with such leaders only as do their work "decently and 
 in order, " in places where they have more or less of refine- 
 ment in their surroundings. Why cannot this rule be 
 reversed, and art be bettered by its moral quality? — 
 Essay on Art and Morals. 
 
 Wherever there is anything human, there, too, exists 
 the possibility of immorality. Art is intensely human. 
 But just as the best type of humanity is distinctly moral, 
 so it is with the best type of art. To this rule, dramatic 
 art furnishes no exception. Nor, for a similar reason, does 
 that of the romance or the novel. — Idem. 
 
 Art, as a pleasurable result, may appeal in a pleasurable 
 way to a man's whole nature; and nothing can do this that, 
 
20O AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 in any degree, shocks and repels him because recognizing 
 it to have an impure and harmful influence upon thought, 
 feeling, or conduct. — Idem. 
 
 MUSIC, AND ITS TEACHER. 
 
 There are certain principles essential to the very existence 
 of every other higher art, as at present developed, which are 
 traceable to music alone ; and no esthetic influence tends so 
 decidedly as that which it exerts to keep alive, in any de- 
 partment of culture, either a realization in theory or an 
 actualizing in experience of such effects as those of law, thor- 
 oughness, accuracy, practise, drill, pleasure in work, or per- 
 sonality in presentation. If what has been said be true, then 
 the music-teacher stands in the very front ranks of those 
 who are leading the armies of culture. Without what he, 
 and he alone, is fitted to contribute, no department of that 
 army can be fully equipped, and all the departments to- 
 gether may fail of their purpose. — Essay on Music as 
 Related to Other A rts. 
 
 MUSIC, AS AFFECTING POSTURE. 
 
 Not until, at least, the rhythm of music — to say nothing 
 of its tune — began to affect the human nerves, did the man 
 begin to dance, and not until he began to dance, did his 
 arrested attitudes begin to emphasize those effects of grace 
 which, perhaps, most clearly differentiate the portrait from 
 the snap-shot photograph and the genre painting from 
 the portrait. It is not too much to say, therefore, that 
 some lessons learned from the influence of music upon the 
 human form are illustrated in almost all pictures and 
 statues, whether considered as ends in themselves, or as 
 ornamenting architecture. — Idem. 
 
 The underlying significance of all straight lines, angles, 
 and curves, whenever or wherever seen, is subtly con- 
 nected with the expressional uses of the same in the poses 
 assumed by the various limbs of the human body. Man 
 is so limited in outlook, so self-centered in insight, that he 
 is obliged to interpret not only God but all nature and its 
 manifestations in accordance with his own experience 
 and actions. So, indirectly, the same strains of music that 
 cause dancing, and thus tend to the exhibition of graceful- 
 ness in the human form, have an influence on the artistic 
 qualities of other of the visible forms that become subjects 
 of art-production. — Idem, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 201 
 
 MUSIC AS RELATED TO LAW. 
 
 The mightiest master of melody and harmony who, as 
 he composes, seems to lose all consciousness of restraint 
 and to give vent to absolutely untrammeled promptings 
 of inspiration, is not one who has risen above the control 
 of rules. He is one who has studied and practised in 
 accordance with them so assiduously that not one cell in 
 his brain can forget them, or break from the habit of ful- 
 filling them, Every musical non-conductor has been, by 
 repeated effort, expelled not only from his conscious but 
 from his unconscious mind. Every nerve in his being 
 vibrates to the touch of harmony, and vibrates according 
 to law. — Idem. 
 
 MUSIC, CHARACTER OF ITS INFLUENCE. 
 
 Music furnishes perhaps the best possible illustration 
 of a fact noticed to be true universally whenever, rising 
 above purely physical conditions, we come to consider 
 forces fitted to affect the mind and soul, — the fact, that it 
 is of more importance to influence the substance of thought 
 than the form of thoughts; of more importance to aim for 
 something giving direction to sentiment than definiteness 
 to statement; in short, that the most profound and lasting 
 effect upon experience is exerted in connection with that 
 which, at the same time, allows the greatest freedom to 
 expression. This principle is illustrated more or less in all 
 the arts. Otherwise they would not merely represent what 
 they have to express; in direct form they would present it. 
 But the principle is especially noticeable in music; and for 
 this reason, probably, the production of it is mentioned so 
 often in the Bible in order to describe symbolically the 
 employment of heaven. Other arts, by words, shapes, or 
 colors, confine thought to some extent; indicating, as they 
 do in no unmistakable way, that of which one should think. 
 Not so with music. It may hold the feelings of a multitude 
 in absolute control; yet, at the same time, it may leave 
 each individual absolutely free to think the thought and 
 to do the deed that is prompted by his individual instincts. 
 — Art in Theory, xviii. 
 
 The most powerful mental agency perhaps is music. 
 To those who can appreciate it, it can bring joy or sadness, 
 smiles or tears, long after every other influence has ceased 
 to affect the feelings. Yet music is the most intangible 
 
202 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 and spiritual of all the arts. There is nothing to see as in 
 sculpture, no movement to animate as in oratory, no words 
 to inspire as in poetry. One hears sounds only; and these 
 vague sounds are so powerful that a man may be thrilled 
 through and through with . . . whatever thoughts of joy 
 or of sadness may be nearest to the heart of the man who is 
 under its control. The same strains may affect differently 
 the experience of every one who listens to them. It may 
 make a child think of his play, a youth of his school, a 
 merchant of his business. — Suggestions for the Spiritual Life^ 
 II. 
 
 Yet, with all this, it would be an error to think that the 
 mental influence of the art is slight. The story of the men 
 hired to assassinate Stradella, who, after listening to his 
 oratorio in Rome, dropped their weapons and became 
 the saviours of his life, is only one story of a thousand 
 evincing men's belief to the contrary. — Essentials of 
 ^Esthetics, vii. 
 
 MUSIC, DRAMATIC. 
 
 His (Wagner's) method was first to associate a motive 
 with some person, object, action, or event; and afterward, 
 whenever that with which it was associated appeared upon 
 the stage or was suggested by the language, thought, feelings, 
 or situations, the motive itself was introduced into either 
 the melody of the voice or the harmony of the instrumen- 
 tation. Not only so, but a certain correspondence was 
 musically indicated between the way in which this was 
 introduced and the relations of the person, object, action, or 
 event to the circumstances attendant upon its introduction. 
 
 This method, to those who have familiarized them- 
 selves with the motives, causes an opera of Wagner to have 
 a double effect: first, the ordinary musical effect which is 
 due to the development of the melodies and harmonies 
 for their own sakes; and, second, the intellectual effect 
 which is due to connecting each of these motives with 
 that which it suggests, and noticing the way in which it 
 blends with other motives or opposes them. This action 
 on an extended scale, of motive upon motive, is what 
 Wagner meant by dramatic music, and it is in the develop- 
 ment of this that he chiefly manifested his originality. It 
 is owing to it, too, that he has obtained such a hold upon 
 his admirers. His method of adapting music to the require- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 203 
 
 ments of intellect necessarily adds to it an intellectual 
 interest. In fact, after making all due allowance for 
 those who applaud and apparently enjoy his music for the 
 same reason that they applaud and apparently enjoy any- 
 thing which is understood to be fashionable, there are cer- 
 tainly many people formerly unable to appreciate anything 
 musical, who have learned to perceive in his works that 
 which they can appreciate, and who, by first coming to 
 take delight in music as developed by him, have come 
 to take an otherwise, for them, impossible interest in all its 
 legitimate forms. Through effects thus exerted Wagner 
 greatly dignified the art to which he devoted himself, 
 as well as extended the sphere of its influence. — Rhythm 
 and Harmony in Poetry and Music : Music as a Represen- 
 tative Arty VIII. 
 
 MUSIC, HOW REPRESENTATIVE (see paragraphs concerning 
 music under representation and representative). 
 Startled by circumstances, the child of nature utters 
 inarticulate cries. These are instinctive in their origin; but 
 are always alike when the mind is influenced by like motives. 
 Therefore men associate them with these motives, for which 
 reason they may be said to be in a true sense representative 
 of them. Availing himself of this fact the artist endeavors 
 to portray in music the effect not of a single feeling, but of 
 an entire current of feelings as set in motion by outside 
 influences. Notice too that all the developments of the art 
 continue as it begins. Notwithstanding the very limited 
 amount of imitation and, in this sense, of comparison that 
 we find in music, nevertheless, a great composer, through 
 introducing only a few imitative notes, may force the mind 
 to connect two things as radically different as, say, a 
 symphony and a landscape. That he may accomplish 
 this end, two conditions are necessary: he must have 
 observed the particular character of the sounds through 
 which the child of nature, and, in some cases, through 
 which the irrational creature, represents particular feel- 
 ings; and again, he must have been conscious within him- 
 self of feelings similarly excited — similar in kind, that is, 
 not in degree — and hence capable of being represented 
 similarly. The two conditions go together. Unless he 
 has observed the forms of expression in natural life, the 
 forms at his command, to be used in his art-product, 
 
204 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 will be few in number. Unless he himself has experienced 
 feelings that naturally lead to such expressions, the few 
 forms that he does use will not be used appropriately. 
 They will have little meaning. They will not speak to 
 the universal human heart with the authority of a veritable 
 language of the emotions. In short, we notice what is in 
 exact analogy with the line of thought in the chapters pre- 
 ceding this, namely, that the same conditions which make 
 music representative of human nature or of natural feel- 
 ing render it representative also of the artist or of the 
 artist's feeling; in other words that to be truly represen- 
 tative of nature, this art must be representative of man 
 also. — Art in Theory, xviii. 
 
 MUSIC, ITS GENESIS {see also ART FOR ART'S SAKE, POETRY 
 vs. MUSIC, ETC.). 
 
 Music has been traced to humming. But only a slight 
 development of this latter is needed in order to turn it 
 into a song; and a song is not merely the beginning of 
 music, but music. Cannot a man sing without construct- 
 ing a product external to himself .f" Certainly he can, and 
 so can a bird; and, if a man could do no more, he could 
 do nothing entitling music to be placed in a class different 
 from that to which, for example, dramatic representation 
 belongs. A melody, in itself considered, is not necessa- 
 rily, in the finest and most distinctive sense, a natural form 
 made human. Yet it may be this. It is so in the degree 
 in which it is unmistakably a product of the art of music. 
 What is such a product? A composition that consists 
 not merely of unstudied subjective expressions in sounds. 
 It is objective. It is a result of labor and practice. Even 
 aside from its usually involving an external writing in 
 musical notation, it is a development of a complicated 
 system of producing notes and scales and chords, not only 
 with the human voice, but with numerous instruments, 
 invented, primarily, so as to imitate every possibility of 
 the human voice, all these working together in accordance 
 with subtle laws of melody and harmony which, as a result 
 of years of experiment, men have discovered and learned 
 to apply. Indeed, almost the slightest musical composing 
 suggests an external product. Simple humming is not 
 only a method of expression for its own sake, but it is a form 
 of nature, of nature as manifested in a man. A symphony 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 205 
 
 is a development not only of the possibilities of this expres- 
 sion, but of its peculiar form; and it involves, therefore, 
 especially in connection with the necessity for a written 
 score and for manufactured instruments, the existence and 
 elaboration of form such as is possible only to an external 
 product. Notice, too, that to the last detail of this elabora- 
 tion, there is nothing whatever in the art that is not attribu- 
 table to the satisfaction which the mind takes in developing 
 the form not for the purpose of attaining an end of material 
 utility, but for the sake of its own intrinsic beauty. — Art 
 in Theory, win. 
 
 MUSIC, ITS LANGUAGE FOR THE MIND. 
 
 There is a natural, inarticulated language of the emotions 
 employed by all of us. What reason is there in nature to 
 suppose otherwise than that all its elements might be com- 
 prehended and tabulated with sufficient definiteness in a 
 few score of carefully related forms of sound? As it is, 
 even now, every really great composer recognizes the 
 existence of this language and unconsciously applies its 
 principles. Why should they not be formulated so that 
 all men could know them? Why should not the psycho- 
 logical correspondences of music be unfolded with as much 
 definiteness as those of elocution to which in their elements 
 they are analogous ? Or, if the formulation of the principles 
 involved would necessitate, as it might, artistic difficulties 
 and dangers impossible to overcome, why, at least, might 
 there not be developed among men such a concurrence of 
 opinion with reference to the principles themselves that the 
 composer would feel constrained, more often than at pres- 
 ent, to regard them? And then, in the degree in which 
 they were carried out persistently and accurately, would 
 not the musical world be made familiar with them, and even 
 the unmusical be made, at any rate, to recognize their 
 existence? Were this done we should have no more writers 
 upon aesthetics with outer and inner senses — ears and 
 minds — so dull of perception as to declare that music does 
 not appeal, as do the other arts, to intelligence, or that it is 
 presentative and not representative. It has been abun- 
 dantly shown here that this view is erroneous; but it would 
 be an advantage to have the recognized conditions of the art 
 clearly reveal the fact. It would be an advantage to have 
 music seen by all in its true position, standing side by side 
 
206 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 with poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture, and rep- 
 resenting in just as legitimate a sense as they, its own appro- 
 priate phase of the influence which nature exerts not merely 
 upon the auditory nerves — which alone would not account 
 for its spiritual effects — but also upon the mind. — Rhythm 
 and Harmony in Poetry and Music : Music as a Representa- 
 tive Art, VIII. 
 
 MUSIC, SPIRITUAL EFFECTS OF. 
 
 If the mind can ever be affected by color in exactly the 
 same way as by sound, then coloring, like music, may 
 become an art setting in motion the general drift of 
 thought and feeling, but leaving imagination free to formu- 
 late what evolves from the drift. Because exerting this 
 kind of influence upon the sources rather than the results 
 of thinking, music never, even when used in worship, tends 
 to dogmatism and bigotry as do, sometimes, the words of 
 hymns, or to idolatry and superstition as do, sometimes, 
 pictures and statues. Its tendencies to a greater extent 
 than those of any of the other arts except, perhaps, archi- 
 tecture, are spiritual and religious. It would be strange if 
 the play of electric light on the stage of the comic opera and 
 the ballet should lead, some day, to a new art — probably of 
 decoration, though possibly of performance — which philoso- 
 phers would have a right to associate with the distinctively 
 spiritual and religious. But it would not be the first time 
 that the world has had experience of such results. Most 
 of us have heard the same kind of music that summons 
 the wild Indian tribes to a war-dance used to collect the 
 throngs of the Salvation Army; and, if we live long enough, 
 we may hear, in many a Sunday-school, the melody of the 
 " Merry Widow Waltz" inciting to all the virtues. If the 
 teachings of history have not been misinterpreted, we might 
 have had none of the harmony that renders possible the 
 great anthems or masses of the present, had it not been for 
 the Bacchanalian street-airs brought together in rounds, 
 which so distressed the serious minded Plato ; or introduced, 
 to relieve, by way of variation, the unisonance of solemn 
 cathedral chants, in disregard of consternation in the souls 
 of the mediaeval priests. — Essay on Music as Related to Other 
 Arts. 
 
 MUSIC vs. POETRY (see also poetry vs. music). 
 
 It follows from what has been said that, as distinguished 
 from poetry, music should be representative of only such 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 207 
 
 indefinite and emotive mental effects as can be expressed 
 in unarticulated sounds. This inference suggests, at once, 
 a reason for certain well-known facts with reference to 
 the effects of this art. It shows us, for instance, why the 
 music invariably conceded to rank highest is instrumental ; 
 , . . and again, it shows us why it is that all men, well- 
 nigh with unanimity, recognize a superlative sweetness in 
 the midnight serenade. In both cases there is experienced 
 a distinctive effect of sound, and of this only. In con- 
 nection with the former, there is no distraction from words ; 
 in connection with the latter, none from sights. — The 
 Representative Significance of Form, xxvi. 
 
 NATURAL EFFECTS RATHER THAN APPEARANCES REPRODUCED 
 
 IN ART {see also art as mental, and repre- 
 sentation IN art vs. imitation). 
 But again, are the effects that come from nature trace- 
 able to the forms in themselves, or to causes behind the 
 forms? Hardly to the forms in themselves, because, 
 practically considered, as has been shown, neither music, 
 poetry, painting, sculpture, nor architecture involves an 
 exact imitation of forms. At best, art merely reproduces, 
 as will be brought out in Chapter XVI., their effects; and 
 again, because, theoretically considered, in reproducing 
 effects, a stream cannot rise higher than its source. How 
 can powerful influences such as, presumably, stir thought 
 or feeling in the presence of beauty, owe their origin to 
 forms that have no force of any kind — at any rate, no 
 mental or spiritual force behind them? — Art in Theory, xv. 
 
 The mind itself is a source of thoughts and feelings. 
 These are constantly at work, and the influence of them may 
 often change completely the specific form in which an effect 
 has come from nature. This is a fact, a discussion of which 
 would have greatly enhanced the value of Lessing's cele- 
 brated criticism upon the "Laocoon. " What is involved 
 in the fact may be made clear by an illustration. Suppose 
 a man to have listened to the story of a battle. It might 
 be presumed that a representation of what he has heard 
 would also assume the form of a story, and therefore be 
 artistically expressed in a poem. But often the effect 
 of the story upon his imagination, as also of his imagination 
 upon it, is such that what is experienced can be represented 
 truthfully only through a picture. Again, it happens 
 
208 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 sometimes that the forms through which the effects have 
 been exerted, have lingered so long in his mind, and experi- 
 enced so many modifications there that, though critical 
 analysis may detect, as in architecture and music, that the 
 effects produced have been suggested by forms in nature, the 
 artist himself is unconscious of what these forms were. — 
 Idem, XVI. 
 
 NATURAL EFFECTS REPRODUCED IN ART {$66 ART AS MENTAL). 
 
 In poems and dramas, the characters represented, 
 although Homeric gods or Miltonic angels, speak and act 
 in ways showing that the artist's ideas concerning them 
 have been modeled upon forms natural to men and women 
 of the earth. Even in music and architecture, the principle 
 holds good, though in a more subtle sense. There would be 
 no melodies if it were not for the natural songs of men and 
 birds or for what are called "the voices of nature"; nor 
 would there be buildings were there not in nature rocks and 
 trees furnishing walls and columns and water-sheds, to say 
 nothing of the innumerable forms suggested by the trunks, 
 branches, leaves, flowers, and other natural figures which 
 architectural details unmistakably imitate. In a word — to 
 repeat what was said before — the effects of art are not what 
 they are because they are unnatural. On the contrary, they 
 all do no more than remake, reproduce, reshape, rearrange, 
 reapply, recombine, represent appearances that nature first 
 supplies. — Art in Theory, i. 
 
 The first condition of art is an audible or visible form; 
 and this form is always a reproduction, at least partially, 
 of something perceived in nature, which term is to be 
 understood as including not only non-human but human 
 nature, as manifested in a man's actions and utter- 
 ances. It follows, therefore, that, in some way, one must 
 always associate with nature whatever thoughts and emo- 
 tions he puts into artistic form. Otherwise, he could not 
 attribute to nature any possibility of representing these; 
 he could not suppose that, by using natural forms as he 
 does, he could suggest his thoughts and emotions to others. 
 — The Representative Significance of Form, i. 
 
 Whenever we term a product of art "natural, " and argue 
 that, because it is so, it is artistically effective, we include 
 in the term "natural" a conception both of form and of 
 conditions which precede and determine form. For in- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 209 
 
 stance, we all recognize that the events portrayed in a drama 
 or a novel are effective in the degree in which they are 
 natural to the conditions that lead up to them, i. e., to 
 the causes occasioning them. — Idem, xii. 
 
 NATURAL FORMS AS THE AGENTS OF EXPRESSION. 
 
 At every stage of intellection, a man is forced to use 
 the forms of the material world in order to represent his 
 mental processes. Otherwise they could not be perceived 
 clearly nor understood intelligently even by himself, and 
 much less by others to whom he wishes to communicate 
 them. Take any one of the more important of the emotions 
 that actuate us and we shall recognize this fact. Take that 
 experience in some of the manifestations of which religious 
 people believe that a man most resembles the Unseen One. 
 Think how love, which is begotten often in a single glance, 
 and is matured in a single thrill, gives vent to its invisible 
 intensity. How infinite in range and in variety are those 
 material forms of earth and air and fire and water which are 
 used by a man as figures through which to represent the emo- 
 tion within him! What extended though sweet tales, what 
 endless repetitions of comparisons from hills and valleys, 
 streams and oceans, flowers and clouds, are made to revolve 
 about that soul which, through the use of them endeavors to 
 picture in poetry spiritual conditions and relations which 
 would remain unrevealed but for the possibility of being 
 thus indirectly symbolized! Nor is it man alone who is 
 obliged to use the forms of material nature in order to reveal 
 the workings of his spirit. He himself does this only, as it 
 were, by way of imitation ; only because he partakes of the 
 nature and therefore must follow the methods of the Crea- 
 tive Spirit to which all men and all material nature owe 
 their origin. If what has been said be true of the expres- 
 sion of human love, why should not the Great Heart whose 
 calm beating works the pulses of the universe express divine 
 love through similar processes evolving infinitely and eter- 
 nally into forms not ideal and verbal, but real and tangible 
 — in fact, into forms which we term those of nature ? 
 
 Do we not all, subtly, at least, believe in the two state- 
 ments just made? Do we not believe that material nature 
 furnishes the representative implements through which a 
 man creates language, and that it furnishes also the actual 
 implements through which the Creative Spirit produces 
 
210 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 a language speaking, though in a less articulate and distinct 
 way, to our thoughts and emotions? — Psychology of Inspi- 
 ration, VI. 
 
 This is the question with which, wittingly or unwittingly, 
 poetry and poetic faith always have confronted and always 
 must confront merely natural science and scientific skepti- 
 cism. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xxviii. 
 
 NATURE, REPRESENTATION OF, ESSENTIAL TO ART. 
 
 Forms of natural expression — intonation, speech, draw- 
 ing, coloring, constructing — just at the point where most 
 satisfactory as means of communicating thought and feeling, 
 lack something that art needs. What is this? It is not 
 difficult to tell. . . . They lack that which can be given, in 
 connection with expression, by the reproduction of the 
 effects of nature. Penmanship and hieroglyphics lack the 
 appearances of nature that are copied in painting and 
 sculpture. Prose lacks the figures of speech and descriptions 
 that in poetry are constantly pointing attention to the same 
 appearances; and, as shown in the last chapter, even the 
 elements subsequently developed into music and archi- 
 tecture lack traces of a very keen observation and extensive 
 use of effects in nature which would not need to be observed 
 or used at all, were the end in view attainable by the mere 
 communication of thought or feeling. Were communica- 
 tion the aim of any art, the elaboration of the forms of 
 nature would cease at the point where it became sufficient 
 for this purpose. — Art in Theory, v. 
 
 NATURE, REVELATION OF ITS LAWS BY POETS AND ARTISTS. 
 
 A philosophical botanist — to say nothing of a poet like 
 Wordsworth — will have scores of thoughts suggested to 
 him by a scene in nature, which would never occur to most 
 of us. Now these scenes in nature, — what are they? 
 They are visible representations of the life and methods 
 at the source of nature. They are illustrations, through 
 the appearances and operations of nature, of what we mean 
 when we speak of divine laws, principles, and truths. I 
 think that everyone admits that one of the chief missions 
 to the world of great poetic and artistic minds, like those of 
 Dante, Angelo, Shakespeare, Raphael, and Goethe, is that 
 they interpret rightly these laws, prinqiples, and truths. — 
 Essay on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS '^211 
 
 NATURE, TRUTH TO, NOT ALL THAT ART NEEDS. 
 
 We are constantly hearing it asserted that, if anything 
 portrayed in art be "true to nature, " this fact is a sufficient 
 warrant for its reproduction — in plays or pictures, for in- 
 stance — and, sometimes, a trustworthy test of its excellence. 
 In connection with this assertion, those who — mainly, as is 
 supposed, for moral reasons — object to some of the practical 
 results of applying the theory involved in it are usually 
 represented to be victims of ignorance or bias which they 
 would not manifest had they been sufficiently cultivated 
 aesthetically. According to the conclusions reached in this 
 volume, nothing could be more at variance with the truth 
 than such assertions and representations. Our whole 
 argument tends to show that the mere fact that effects 
 are "true to nature " by no means justifies their use in art of 
 high quality. They can be used in this so far only as, in the 
 first place, they are in themselves beautiful, and, in the 
 second place, are, aside from themselves, suggestive, or 
 capable of being made suggestive, of the artist's thought 
 and feeling. Ugliness and vileness are never beautiful in 
 themselves, though, at times, some feature manifesting them 
 may enhance, by way of contrast, the beauty of some other 
 feature which they are introduced in order to offset. When 
 they form the sole theme of paintings, statues, novels, or 
 dramas, as, unfortunately, is the case in many products of 
 many men greatly praised in our own time, — their names 
 need not be mentioned, — the result is opposed to the first 
 principles of aesthetics still more than of ethics. — The 
 Essentials of ^Esthetics, xviii. 
 
 NOVEL, INFLUENCE OF THE MODERN. 
 
 When we recall the Puritanism, the bigotry, and the 
 sectarianism of the last century, we cannot fail to contrast 
 them with the humaneness and the liberality of thought and 
 feeling prevailing in our own times; and, if we ask what has 
 wrought the change, we are forced to ascribe it, very largely, 
 to the influence of the modern novel. Through portrayals 
 of people entirely different in motives, manners, customs, 
 and characters from those with whom the novel's readers 
 have associated, these readers have been enabled to become 
 well acquainted with conditions of thought and of life foreign 
 to their own. The effect has been to broaden their knowl- 
 edge of the world and of hiunan nature, and to increase 
 
212 ' AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 almost infinitely their sympathies with men of "all sorts 
 and conditions." In other words the novel has given mil- 
 lions of people whose real experience, perhaps, has been 
 necessarily confined to the narrow limits of a single village, 
 a substitute in the way of an imaginative experience almost 
 as effective as anything obtained by actual travel. That 
 one normal result of such an imaginative experience is to 
 purify mind and heart through developing wisdom and 
 charity has been proved by the effects which can unmis- 
 takably be traced to this form of literature. — Art in Theory ^ 
 Appendix iii. 
 
 NOVEL, ITS REFORMATORY INFLUENCE. 
 
 It is less the influence of the pulpit than of the novel 
 that in our own land, within the memory of some still 
 living, has not only freed the slave and unfrocked the 
 aristocrat, but has snatched the standards of sectarianism 
 from the hands of hypocrites and bigots, and restored for 
 all the Church the one standard of Constantine, and that 
 one not held up by the hands of man, but flaming in the 
 sky. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 NUDE ART. 
 
 As applied to the human figure, and to the expression, 
 through every part of it, of some special phase of signifi- 
 cance, it is apparent that certain legitimate deductions 
 from this principle are often ignored. When this is said, 
 it must be said also, if we are to deal with the subject 
 with perfect truth, that they are ignored almost as much 
 in certain disguising concealments of the form character- 
 izing some of the customs of civilization, as in certain 
 disenchanting exposures of it characterizing some of the 
 conventionalities of art. Viewing the subject not with 
 the prejudice which supposes that whatever is, is neces- 
 sarily right, and therefore finds fault with straight skirts 
 on a woman merely because others are wearing hoops, 
 and with knickerbockers on a man merely because others 
 are wearing pantaloons; but viewing the subject in a 
 rational way, it may be said that the human form just as 
 it is, is God-made, whereas human clothing is man-made; 
 and that the latter, even though it drag for yards behind 
 the feet, especially if with just enough exposure to sug- 
 gest a possibility of more exposure, may be in its 
 tendency less humanizing, in a good sense, than a garb dis- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 213 
 
 closing enough, at least, to allow free and natural expression 
 to the soul within. The Hebrew priest was told to 
 sprinkle the blood of a sacrificial victim — representing 
 life that was innocent and therefore spiritual — on the 
 vessels of the temple every time that he had occasion to 
 use them. The people were thus taught that nothing in 
 the world that is material, not even a consecrated imple- 
 ment of the sanctuary, is sacred except when made to 
 represent the presence of spiritual life. Much less is th^ 
 material clothing of human figures sacred. One might 
 argue that it can never represent spiritual life quite as 
 well as when it faithfully reveals the general outlines of 
 the form which the creative power designed that spiritual 
 life on earth should have. Or — to examine the subject 
 in the light of its practical effects — what artist ever repre- 
 sented a wanton in the scanty short skirts and bare feet 
 of a peasant? What man, so far as form in dress could 
 affect him, would not be conscious of more kindly, tender, 
 generous, and protective impulses awakened in him by the 
 simple clothing of the latter, or of a young girl just enter- 
 ing her teens, than by the trailing silks and laces of the 
 former? This much for one of the many mistakes of 
 civilization. No influence is more indirectly exalting than 
 beauty, and no beauty ought to be more exalting than 
 that of the human form. To veil it wholly, as the Oriental 
 women do their faces, may impair the charm of life not 
 only, but its chastity. When much that is concealed, might, 
 if revealed, put an end both to legitimate curiosity and to 
 purely aesthetic desires, might it not also put an end to much 
 that, when developed, reinforces desires of a less worthy 
 nature? It is certainly a question whether in such cases, 
 complete satisfaction would not often accompany that 
 which satisfied merely the eye. The Japanese, familiar 
 from childhood with an almost total exposure of the form, 
 and notwithstanding traditionally low standards of con- 
 ventional morality, are believed by themselves, and by 
 others who have studied them, to be, absolutely considered, 
 more moral by nature, in that they are less prone to morbid 
 and soulless forms of indulgence, than are the Europeans. 
 Is not one proof of this — as it certainly is a proof of the 
 delicacy of their sense of propriety and, for that matter, of 
 beauty — afforded by the fact that, in their higher art, com- 
 plete nudity is never depicted? So much for a mistake of 
 
214 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 conventional fashion. Now a few words with reference to a 
 mistake in an opposite direction made by conventional art. 
 The true principle in art is that it should represent life, and, 
 if dealing with human life, should represent that which is 
 in the highest sense humanizing. But that which is in the 
 highest sense humanizing gives principality to mental and 
 spiritual suggestions, and keeps others subordinate. Can 
 this be said to be done when parts of the body, which even 
 barbarians conceal, are exposed, in conditions, as some- 
 times happens in modern art, so different from those of 
 natural life that one is forced to the inference that they are 
 exposed for the sole purpose of exposure ? In answer to this 
 we are referred to Greek art. But Greek art was true to the 
 conditions of Greek life. The legitimate deduction is that 
 our art should be true to the conditions of our life. . . . 
 The truth is that, in this, as in every other practical possi- 
 bility, there is no end worth seeking, whether it be the 
 representation of human sentiment or of skill in workman- 
 ship, that cannot be attained without going to extremes. 
 When one thinks of this fact, and of the liability, if it be dis- 
 regarded, of having art lower its aims, or if not this, having it 
 antagonize, through creating false impressions of its aims, 
 thousands of those in special need of its influence, — in other 
 words, when one thinks how much might be gained to the 
 world, and how little can be lost, by applying in this sphere 
 the same common sense that all men are expected to apply 
 in other spheres, it certainly seems strange that those who 
 wish to make the most of art should pursue a course, in either 
 criticism or production, fitted really to make the least of it. 
 — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, vii. 
 
 A friend of mine once met, on a Pacific steamship, a 
 Japanese fresh from his own country who represented him- 
 self as greatly shocked by some framed photographs of 
 European works of art of excessive disrobement which he 
 had observed hanging in the Captain's cabin. "Why?" — 
 said my friend to him. *' It is only what one can see almost 
 every day in the life of your own land." "We have it in 
 life," replied the Japanese, "but we don't thrust it upon 
 attention, and, by elaborating it in our art, make a public 
 confession of how much we have been thinking and feeling 
 about it. " It is well to observe that this representative of 
 the most artistic of living races was not influenced by ethics 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 215 
 
 but by aesthetics, — by the requirements merely of delicate 
 instinct and good taste. — Essentials of Esthetics, xviii. 
 
 OBSCURITY, LITERARY, WHEN EXCUSABLE {see olsO 
 
 ellipsis). 
 Frequently, the difference between the artistic and scien- 
 tific method might be said to be owing merely to the differ- 
 ent degrees of rapidity with which the thoughts are moving. 
 This fact will be evident upon recalling the condition usually 
 accompanying the mind's imaginative and, therefore, parti- 
 ally subconscious actions. It will be found to be a condition 
 of emotive excitement. Listen to the children as they 
 watch a display of fireworks. With what facility they 
 recognize resemblances! Roosters, churches, fans, and 
 fountains, — these are what they imagine to be in shapes 
 suggesting nothing to their parents. Yet when some 
 excitement strong enough to appeal to these latter has 
 succeeded in moving them, they, too, will become unex- 
 pectedly imaginative. As for the intelligent artist, there 
 is reason to suppose that imaginative results in his case, 
 also, are owing to mental action too rapid for him to be 
 conscious of all its processes. This fact, indeed, is often 
 very effectively represented in artistic products, especially 
 in literature, the words of which are particularly fitted to 
 reveal exactly what is taking place in the thoughts to 
 which the words give expression. Recall the ellipses and 
 consequent obscurity in which writers like Carlyle and 
 Browning indulge. In almost every instance where obscur- 
 ity of this kind is observable, some additional reflec- 
 tion would have enabled the writer to recall and to reveal 
 the missing links of thought, and thus to give his expres- 
 sions the effects of careful precision. In many cases we 
 may criticize his not doing this. But had he done it in 
 all cases, would the result have been as artistic as it is? 
 Thus expressed, would it not have represented a concep- 
 tion in all of its details clearly present to the conscious 
 mind? But art, as we have found, represents a concep- 
 tion of a part of which the mind is conscious and of a part 
 of which, owing to the rapidity of its processes, the mind 
 is not conscious. Thus this effect of obscurity, so often 
 recognized as being for some vague reason particularly 
 artistic, is seen to be so because it accords exactly with 
 the requirements of art. — Identy iii. 
 
2i6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 OBSCURITY, LITERARY, WHEN INEXCUSABLE. 
 
 The conclusions that have been reached thus far con- 
 cur in serving to prove that poetry as an art must have 
 form, the very sounds of the single and consecutive words 
 of which must represent the phases and movements, physi- 
 cal, intellectual, or emotional, of which they are supposed to 
 be significant; and it has been shown that great poets like 
 Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton are great masters of 
 representative expression in this sense. It follows from 
 these facts that there is no artistic warrant for produc- 
 ing effects of sound through insertion, transposition, alter- 
 ation, omission, or other use of words, that by violating the 
 laws of grammar or lexicography obscures the meaning. . . . 
 This statement agrees not only with the most recent deduc- 
 tions of physiological aesthetics, but also with those of com- 
 mon sense. The test of form in every case is its fitness to 
 represent, at least clearly, if not, as it sometimes should, 
 brilliantly, every line and color, every phase and movement, 
 every fact and suggestion of the ideas to be expressed. If 
 this test be borne in mind, there can still be plenty of 
 poetic failures from lack of poetic ideas, but no failures from 
 a mere lack of the very easily obtained knowledge of the 
 rudimentary principles of poetic technique. — Poetry as a 
 Representative Art, xiv. 
 
 OBSERVATION. 
 
 To whatever art we look, in the degree in which a work 
 rises toward the highest rank, it continues to train our 
 powers of observation. One difference between the great 
 poet, for instance, and the little poet is in those single words 
 and phrases that indicate accuracy in the work of ear or eye, 
 or of logical or analogical inference. Recall Tennyson's 
 references to the ** gouty oak," the "shock-head willow," 
 the ** wet-shod alder." . . . Now can you tell me any 
 study for the young that will cultivate accuracy of obser- 
 vation, that will begin to do this, as can be done by setting 
 them tasks in drawing, coloring, carving, or, if we apply the 
 same principle to the ear as well as to the eye, in elocution 
 and music? — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 OBSERVATION, ACCURACY OF, IMPORTANT. 
 
 When a fire threatens several places in a street, when a 
 ship seems about to strike another in a storm or fog, when a 
 general is about to meet an enemy upon land on which there 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 217 
 
 are a few knolls or houses, then that man is apt to be the 
 most efficient who, in the briefest glance, can perceive most 
 clearly the largest number of conditions and possibilities. 
 So in the scientific world, the successful botanist is he who 
 notices with most accuracy every turn of line or color that 
 distinguishes one leaf or limb from another; the successful 
 physician is he who is keen enough not to leave out of his 
 diagnosis a single one of the small and, apparently, insigni- 
 ficant symptoms that separate one disease from other 
 diseases. To be able to observe is equally important in less 
 serious circumstances. I once had a servant in my house 
 who apparently never failed to hear anything said in no 
 matter how low a tone, or to see anything left in no matter 
 how hidden a place. All the members of the household were 
 inclined to feel that, with her about, they were leading rather 
 too conspicuous a life. But when she gave way to another 
 servant, who apparently could hear or see nothing, a cry for 
 help seemed constantly going up that the help for which 
 we were paying never supplied. . . . Hundreds of similar 
 instances might be cited, all illustrating the importance 
 of cultivating, when deficient, habits of observation. All 
 habits, as we know, are cultivated best in childhood. 
 Nothing tends to cultivate accuracy in the perception of 
 every phase of form, as does the effort to draw or to color it. 
 — Essay on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 OBSERVATION VS. THEORY AS AN ART-METHOD {see also 
 
 models). 
 Though induction, as a philosophic method, was not 
 formulated till the time of Bacon, it has been practised ever 
 since the origin of the human mind; and in every period of 
 high attainment it has been practised extensively. Nor 
 does the history of art furnish any exception to this state- 
 ment, though, at many different periods, certain works have 
 been produced in large numbers on the supposition that 
 mere theories of form, originally derived, of course, from 
 nature, but finally held independently of it, could be sub- 
 stituted for continued and careful observation. We find 
 such works among the remains of the arts of Egypt and As- 
 syria, as well as of Greece prior to the time of Daedalus. We 
 find them in the painting and sculpture of the primitive 
 Christians, and of the Middle Ages. We find them in the 
 conventional flowers and leaves wrought into the decorations 
 of the earlier Gothic cathedrals. We find them in many of 
 
2i8 AN ART.PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 the figures and landscapes of the arts of China and Japan; 
 and we find them in designs for illustrations of books 
 and for ornamentations on walls, even in elaborately 
 wrought products of the decorative and what is termed 
 the decadent art of our own day; but we find them in 
 the foremost products of no age or style in which art is 
 acknowledged to have been at its best. — Proportion and 
 Harmony of Line and Color, vii. 
 
 OPERA, ITS EFFECTS NOT ALL THOSE OF ART. 
 
 What operatic company is successful in our own country 
 in case it contain no preeminent solo-singer? And, aside 
 from the parts in which the music is sufficient unto itself, 
 what does the opera furnish save a species of intellectual dis- 
 sipation rather than of recreation; save effects that, on 
 account of their variety, are distracting rather than restful, 
 — effects in which there is very little influence resembling 
 that of the "still, small voice" which thrills us when listen- 
 ing to the song of the family circle or to the "pure music" of 
 the concert room, or when reading a beautiful poem or 
 listening to an eloquent address ? All parts of the opera fur- 
 nish changes from ordinary thoughts and occupations ; and 
 all changes have their charms. But something more than 
 the effect of mere change must be produced before one can 
 experience that distinctively aesthetic influence which 
 cultivated minds know to be the result of the highest 
 art. — The Representative Significance of Form, xxvi. 
 
 Songs and operas are often enjoyed immensely by persons 
 to whom music as music is a sealed art. Their pleasure in 
 the song is similar to that which attends the utterance of 
 very rhythmical poetry; and in the opera, the gaudy play- 
 house, the gayly dressed people, the glittering stage, and the 
 movements of the actors are all entertaining on their own 
 accounts. A real musician, however, frequently regards 
 everything of this sort as a distraction; and he enjoys the 
 music connected with it just as much — sometimes more — 
 when the words used on the stage are in a foreign language 
 which he does not understand, or when the harmony is 
 played, apart from either words or scenery, by an orchestra 
 in a concert. — Idem, xxvi. 
 
 ORATION, FORM OF ONE AS A WHOLE. 
 
 An experienced public speaker, unless in a time of unusual 
 excitement, begins his address with his body at rest, with his 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 219 
 
 tones uttered deliberately, with the pitch of his voice one 
 that is natural to conversation, and with the range of his 
 thoughts not raised much above the level of those of his 
 hearers. In other words, he starts where the audience are, 
 with no more of vehemence, rapidity, or brilliancy than is 
 justified by the condition of thought in their minds at the 
 time. He begins in the plane of ordinary, dignified inter- 
 course, making no statement with which he has not reason 
 to suppose that most of them will agree. But as he ad- 
 vances, his gestures, tones, language, and ideas gradually 
 wax more and more energetic, striking, and original, till 
 he reaches his climax. In the oration, perfect in form, in- 
 tended to produce a single distinct and definite impression, 
 this final climax, though often preceded by many another 
 of less importance, stands out preeminently in advance of 
 them. In it all the man's powers of action and of lan- 
 guage, and the influence of all his separate arguments that 
 now for the last time are summed up into a unity, seem 
 to be concentrated like rays of light in a focus, and flashed 
 forth for the enlightenment or bewilderment of those before 
 him. But the most artistic oration does not end with the 
 climax. At least, a few sentences and sentiments follow 
 this, through which the action, voice, and ideas of the 
 speaker gradually, gracefully, and sympathetically descend 
 to bear the thoughts of his audience back again to the plane 
 from which they started. That is to say, the artistic oration 
 has an end as well as a beginning and a middle. It is a 
 representation in complete organic form of the whole range 
 of experience natural to discussion, from the time when a 
 subject is first broached in ordinary conversation to the 
 time when, having been argued fully and in such ways as to 
 produce a single effect, the mind in exhaustion sinks back, 
 once more, to the level of the conversation that suggested 
 it. — The Genesis of Art-Form^ vi. 
 
 ORATORY, ARTIFICIALITY IN {see also ELOCUTION TEACHERS). 
 
 Artificiality, in speaking, invariably resiilts from paying 
 attention, and, therefore, giving importance to something 
 that should be treated as if of little or no importance. — 
 Essay on Elocution in the Theological Seminary. 
 
 ORATORY AS DISTINGUISHED FROM POETRY. 
 
 Oratory involves some of the representative character- 
 istics not only of elocution but also — and here it is at one 
 
220 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 with rhetoric — of poetry. Like the latter, both oratory and 
 rhetoric result in an external product. But, counteract- 
 ing this latter fact, is another which causes both to differ 
 not only from the dramatic art but equally from music, 
 poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is the fact 
 that, at its best, neither public address nor rhetoric is at- 
 tributable, as we have found to be true of the effects of 
 these arts, to the satisfaction derived from elaborating 
 a form of expression as a thing of beauty aside from an 
 end of utility. Oratory invariably springs from a desire 
 to influence, in certain definite directions, the thoughts 
 and feelings of those to whom it is addressed. This fact 
 makes its rhetoric differ from poetry no less than its delivery 
 does from acting. Anything that attracts attention merely 
 to the manner of expression, to form as form, is injurious 
 both to oratory and to rhetoric per se. But it is often essen- 
 tial to the effects of the actor and the poet. — Art in Theory, 
 
 IX. 
 
 ORATORY, EXPRESSIVE OF WILL. 
 
 Emotion influencing mainly the feelings, leads to music; 
 influencing the thoughts to poetry; influencing the will 
 to oratory. The orator strives to give expression to 
 feelings or thoughts not for the sake of their own intrinsic 
 worth or beauty, but for their influence upon others. As 
 already pointed out, oratory is not so much an aesthetic as 
 a practical art. As soon as the speaker loses all hope of 
 causing others to agree with him, he ceases to harangue 
 them. — Idem, xix. 
 
 ORATORY OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
 
 The orator who, with the least appearance of effort, could 
 produce the most satisfactory effects both of time and of 
 modulation was Wendell Phillips. He could measure off his 
 rhythm without any suggestion of monotony in recurrence; 
 and could pass over all the notes of two octaves so subtly that 
 half of his audience would be willing to take oath that he 
 had not varied his intonations by more than two or three 
 intervals. If a natural effect be the perfection of art, then 
 he was the most artistic elocutionist of his day. — The 
 Representative Significance of Form, xxiii. 
 
 ORATORY, ONE SECRET OF SUCCESS IN IT. 
 
 The late Dr. Tyng, formerly rector of St. George's 
 Church, New York, said that the secret of his success as a 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 221 
 
 public speaker was his imagining everyone before him to 
 be a numskull to whom every little statement must be 
 explained. — Essay on the Function of Technique. 
 
 ORATORY vs. CONVERSATION {sCC ELOCUTIONARY). 
 
 When a man turns from conversation to public address, 
 he has departed from the conditions of nature; and unless he 
 have that rare artistic temperament which enables excep- 
 tional minds to recognize instinctively the new relationships 
 and proportionments, each to each, of the elementary 
 elements of expression, he cannot restore these conditions 
 except as he acquires skill through following the directions of 
 some instructor who has such a temperament. 
 
 Successfully changing private speech into public speech 
 involves much the same process as turning a bug into 
 a bird through the use of a microscope. If you merely 
 put one edge of the glass over his head, or tail, or wing, this 
 appears too large for the rest of his body. Only when you 
 hold your microscope so as to magnify every part of him 
 alike is the result natural. When a man begins to talk in 
 public, he necessarily departs from the conditions of nature 
 by using a louder and higher tone and more breath. As a 
 result, he feels a tendency, at the end of every long sentence, 
 to lessen his force, lower his pitch, and cease to vocalize 
 all his breath. But if he yield to this tendency, which now, 
 as you notice, has, in the changed conditions, become what, 
 in one sense, may be termed natural, he produces, as in what 
 is called the ministerial tone, a series of intonations entirely 
 different from those which, in a far more important sense, 
 can be termed natural. — Essay on the Function of Technique. 
 
 ORIGINALITY AND ECCENTRICITY {see STANDARDS and TASTE). 
 
 Every schoolboy, musing on the genius of his recitation 
 room, believes originality, and this in the sense, too, of 
 eccentricity, to be not alone the essential but almost the 
 only requisite for success in art. All general beliefs are 
 based upon truths. This belief is based upon the require- 
 ment that the artist must be able to make the forms of 
 nature after which he models conform to his individual men- 
 tality. If art were nature, it would not be art ; and the only 
 possible distinction between the two which can be deter- 
 mined by the conceptions embodied is that the one is char- 
 acteristic of the mind of the Creator, and the other equally 
 so of the mind of man. Now one whom the world esteems 
 
222 AN ART^PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 *'a. character," and with whom therefore it associates an 
 essential capacity for characterization, is, par excellence, a 
 man whose individuality is distinct and definite. The 
 characteristic effects are sometimes produced by traits that 
 are merely eccentric. But whatever may produce them, 
 they are apt to render any individualization of nature that 
 he attempts, distinct and definite. Therefore, the artist and 
 the eccentric character have something in common ; and the 
 boy's mistake in judging of the genius of his school, is only 
 that which is common with his elders, — namely, that of tak- 
 ing something to be everything. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, xiv. 
 
 Another thought is suggested. The tendencies to imita- 
 tion on the one side and to eccentricity on the other, which 
 have been said to characterize the developments of art 
 where there is no belief in approximately definite stand- 
 ards, is connected with a false conception of what consti- 
 tutes that originality which everybody acknowledges to 
 be essential to great art. It is the conception that origi- 
 nality is a constituent of mere form. Originality of course 
 is a characteristic of form, in which alone it can be mani- 
 fested; but the artistic originality which men mean to 
 applaud when they speak of it, is originality of form as 
 expressive of significance, originality that is felt to be a 
 manifestation of mental freshness and uniqueness, therefore 
 of what we term — including in our conceptions both the 
 intellectual and the spiritual — personal force. That it is 
 this force issuing from the sources of the soul to which men 
 mean to refer when praising originality, needs no further 
 proof than that the trait which they praise is not always 
 prevented by imitation of form, nor always helped by eccen- 
 tricity of form. An actor can show his personal originality 
 by imitating; and a very bashful man can entirely hide 
 his by eccentricity. Notice, too, that the argument against 
 the existence of standards of art founded on the supposi- 
 tion that they may interfere with originality has, for the 
 reasons just stated, no basis in fact. To make external 
 forms conform to a standard is not to interfere with the 
 expression of the originality which is of the soul and mind. 
 Through an application of identical methods, one may give 
 an elocutionary education to two men, making the voices 
 of both equally musical and their movements equally 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 223 
 
 graceful. Yet the method as carried out in the forms 
 manifested by the one may make him a great and original 
 actor, and the personality behind the forms manifested by 
 the other may result in no greatness or originality what- 
 ever. At the same time, the first man, with all the origi- 
 nal bent of his genius, could not have become the great 
 artist that he is, without learning to conform his repre- 
 sentation to the standards of his art. — Proportion and 
 Harmony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 ORIGINALITY, ARTISTIC. 
 
 After all, the difficulty, in our age, is not to find new 
 methods of producing genuinely artistic effects, but to find 
 artists with sufficient originality to recognize their possi- 
 bilities. Nor is there a surer way in which they may be led 
 to realize them than through coming to know and feel and 
 embody in their products the principle that all art, even 
 constructively considered, should be representative. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 ORIGINALITY IN ARCHITECTURE (^^e ARCHITECTURE, MODERN). 
 
 As has been suggested, proportion, in its character, 
 is not only simple but complex, and its effects cannot 
 be produced on a large scale without the most careful 
 and profound study. These effects, too, are still capable of 
 further development. The forms of Greek, Gothic, Moorish, 
 Romanesque, or Renaissance art have no more exhausted 
 the possibilities of architecture than analogous develop- 
 ments in poetry, painting, or music. In this land and age, 
 we can, and should, have an architecture of our own, to 
 meet the requirements of our climate, as the Greek may not ; 
 of our customs, as the Gothic may not; and of our artistic 
 instincts, as the Queen Anne may not. Such an architecture 
 can be thoroughly original, yet if, in trying to make it so, we 
 neglect the principles according to which the minds that are 
 to view it must judge of it, we cannot expect it to commend 
 itself to general approval, even in our own times, and much 
 less in coming times. Whatever may be the nature of his 
 designs, the architect who deals with shapes must remember 
 that shapes fill space just as sounds fill time, and that for the 
 purposes of art the appearances of similarly related measure- 
 ments in the one are as necessary as in the other. In short 
 he must never forget that which it has been found necessary 
 
224 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 to repeat so many times already, that the fundamental 
 principle in art is to group sizes as well as shapes by put- 
 ting together those that, if not as wholes, in parts at least, 
 can be made to seem alike. — Proportion and Harmony of 
 Line and Color, xiii. 
 
 When a style is just beginning to be developed, a builder, 
 having learned nothing from his own experience or that of 
 others, ^ necessarily makes mistakes. His work is the 
 expression of his thought. It is original; but not always 
 artistic. Much later on, in the development of the style, pre- 
 cisely the opposite condition is found. The highest con- 
 ception of the builder seems to be that his forms should 
 be modeled — not partly, which would be unobjectionable, 
 but entirely, — upon those of preceding buildings, ancient 
 or modern. These preceding buildings are either wholly 
 copied by him, in which case the new product is a mere imi- 
 tation ; or else several different buildings are copied in part 
 and in part combined with other forms that he originates ; 
 in which case, because the method in accordance with 
 which such forms as he combines were brought together by 
 the earlier architects is not known, often not even studied, 
 his new product is incongruous. Its effects are produced 
 with too little regard for the considerations which must 
 have influenced those who produced the original forms 
 which are imitated — namely, the requirements of the design 
 of the bmlding and of the eye and mind as affected by great 
 natural laws like those of propriety, proportion, and sym- 
 metry. — Art in Theory, ill. 
 
 ORNAMENT IN ARCHITECTURE (see ARCHITECTURE, FRAUD IN). 
 
 All appropriate ornamentation, as brought out in ** Paint- 
 ing, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts," 
 is the result of an adaptation of means to ends. A roof, for 
 instance, is a necessary conclusion in the case of every 
 erection designed for shelter; but towers or turrets are not. 
 Upon a hillside or elevation, a tower may indicate a view; 
 but what is its meaning in a valley or surrounded by a 
 forest? Over a public building a dome may suggest a hall 
 beneath, too lofty and too vast to enable it to afford support 
 to an ordinary roof; but of what is it significant in a private 
 house? In connection with a mosque or church, a minaret 
 or spire may recall a "call to prayer," or suggest a bell or 
 even the heaven above; but who can understand the con- 
 
Cologne Cathedral — Fagade 
 
 See pages 4, 9, 10, 15, 19, 73, 81-85, 89, 91, 162, 223-225^ 
 
 316, 323-327 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 225 
 
 nection between these suggestions and a warehouse? — The 
 Representative Significance of Form, xxiv. 
 
 The representing of a material less difficult to work in 
 material which is more difficult, is usually considered es- 
 sential to the highest artistic success. While it is deemed 
 appropriate, for instance, to make a stone building repre- 
 sent, as in the case of the Greek temple, noticed on page 
 376, a wooden building, it is not deemed so to make a 
 wooden building represent a stone one, or to make a wooden 
 balustrade look like a brass one, or stamped paper look like 
 bronze. — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Repre- 
 sentative Arts, XXI. 
 
 The spire of a church enables strangers to know where 
 to find a place of worship. But in part, also, especially 
 as it has been developed, it is monumental and ornamental. 
 For this reason, care should be taken to have it appear not 
 essentially cheaper than the edifice to which it is attached. 
 As a rule, a stone church should have a stone steeple, not a 
 wooden one. On large public buildings, again, such as 
 schools and colleges, a cupola, or any like arrangement, 
 can accomplish a useful purpose. It can serve for a clock 
 tower, belfry, or observatory. But if it cannot do this, it 
 would generally better be omitted. The same can be said 
 of towers on houses situated in city streets, where they are 
 overtopped by surrounding buildings, or placed in positions 
 where they themselves need not be seen from a distance, or 
 where other things need not be seen from them; that is to 
 say where there is no possible use to which they can be put. 
 Only where architecture, which is a development of that 
 which is useful in building, turns into ornamental features 
 things primarily intended to be of use, is it carrying out the 
 principles of representative art. When it is doing any- 
 thing else, as in arbitrarily introducing unnecessary features 
 in order thus to obtain something that can be made orna- 
 mental, it is in danger of carrying out no principles of art 
 whatever. — Idem, xix. 
 
 PAINT, EXCESS OF, IN PICTURES. 
 
 When we look at a picture in which the drawing or color- 
 ing is defective, causing disproportion in the parts, un- 
 atmospheric sharpness of outline, absence of shadowy 
 gradation — above all, a predominating impression of paint 
 everywhere — the effect is exactly like that of powder and 
 
226 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 rouge on a woman's face. It is impossible to see any soul 
 through or past the form. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 PAINTERS, IF GREAT, ARE USUALLY DISCOVERERS. 
 
 With scarcely an exception, the greatest painters seem to 
 have attained to fame almost as much on account of their 
 discoveries as of their productions, the inspiration to 
 investigation having apparently proved the surest stimu- 
 lus to invention. At least, it can be said that the two 
 tendencies have gone hand in hand; and undoubtedly 
 the frequent temporary decline of painting, as of every art, 
 immediately after great achievements, has been attributa- 
 ble in part to the supposition of men of genius that all its 
 secrets had been discovered, — a supposition which has 
 caused them to turn from it to pursuits like philosophy, 
 science, or politics, which seemed at the time to promise 
 a more certain reward for original effort. — Proportion and 
 Harmony of Line and Color, xvii. 
 
 PAINTING {see COLOR, HARMONY OF COLOR, REPRESENTATIVE 
 EFFECTS OF COLORS). 
 
 " PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND ARCHITECTURE AS REPRE- 
 SENTATIVE ARTS," ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK. 
 
 (Recapitulation:) In the volume entitled "Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts," first 
 through an analysis of the elements of visible representation, 
 it is shown that large size or deep shading in certain features, 
 when connected with the opposite in other features, sug- 
 gests, whether in landscapes, figures, or buildings, either con- 
 ceptions or surroundings characterized by such traits as 
 heaviness, strength, immobility, influence, or nearness ; and, 
 again, that outlines formed by the continuity of curves, and 
 also those manifesting irregularity, suggest the normal and 
 natural in landscapes, and the free and unconstrained in 
 figures, whereas straightness, angularity, and regularity 
 suggest the abnormal and artificial, as in effects of vol- 
 canic action in nature, of self-conscious and constrained 
 action in men, and of rectangularity in buildings and in 
 most other human constructions. In unfolding this sub- 
 ject, the principles shown to underlie other forms of visi- 
 ble representation are applied to a complete system of 
 expressing thoughts and emotions through the shapes, 
 postures, gestures, and facial movements of the human 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 227 
 
 body. Following this, comes a discussion of the repre- 
 sentative significance of the different colors. 
 
 The concluding part of the book treats of the repre- 
 sentation of mental conceptions and also of material sur- 
 roundings in compositions as wholes; first, in landscape, 
 portrait, genre, historic, allegoric, and symbolic painting 
 and sculpture, and, after this, in architecture. In discuss- 
 ing this latter art, it is shown that the constructive con- 
 ception, as well as the plan, can be represented in the 
 interior and exterior of a building; and, in a series of illus- 
 trations presenting various huts and tents as constructed 
 by the natural man side by side with columns, pediments, 
 entablatures, arches, roofs, and spires of perfected art, it 
 is shown that the latter are developed from the former 
 through a picturesque and statuesque and, in this sense, 
 representative motive. — Proportion and Harmony of Line 
 and Color, xxvi. 
 
 PAINTING vs. DECORATIVE ART {see also DECORATIVE). 
 
 We may be sure that any theory true as applied to one 
 art is in analogy to that which is true of every other art of 
 the same class; and I, for one, refuse to take from the art 
 of painting its right to be classed among the other higher 
 arts. Why does it rank with the humanities, and not with 
 the merely decorative arts ? — why, but because its products 
 so distinctively give expression to human thought, — in 
 other words, so unmistakably suggest significance? — Essay 
 on Art and Education. 
 
 PAINTING vs. LANDSCAPE GARDENING {see LANDSCAPE 
 GARDENING.) 
 
 When we recall what an inartistic impression is frequently 
 conveyed by the reproducing in a picture of a highly culti- 
 vated park, or of a gentleman's homestead, — the house 
 architecturally correct, and the avenues leading to it as 
 clearly drawn as the lines of a geometric figure, — then we 
 may understand with some definiteness what is meant by 
 confounding the conceptions to be expressed in landscape- 
 gardening and in painting. Both ought to represent, as 
 all art should, the effects of nature at first hand; but, in the 
 case of pictures such as those just mentioned, there is danger 
 that the main impression conveyed will be of the effects upon 
 nature of some man, of some landscape-artist. And reflec- 
 tion will convince us that this is the reason — certainly a suf- 
 
328 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 ficient one — why such pictures often appear inartistic. They 
 manifest, to too great an extent, the influence of a method 
 of representation appropriate to another art. — The Repre- 
 sentative Significance of Form, xxvii. 
 
 PAINTING VS. POETRY, COMPARISON AND CONTRAST IN EACH 
 
 (see also contrast, and poetic description). 
 The difference in painting between high and ordinary art 
 is revealed in the contrast between the picture and nature. 
 In passing through the mediumship of the man, that which 
 came from nature has been changed. Each change has been 
 wrought by an idea, and all the changes together indicate 
 a contrast between what nature really is and the artist's idea 
 of what it might be. Here, at the very beginning of the 
 mental tendency that is represented in painting, we have 
 a beginning of that principle of contrast that enters so 
 largely into the painter's success when using, in a merely 
 technical way, the elements of light and shade and color. 
 While poetry, as in . . . picturesque language . . . uses com- 
 parison with only occasional contrast, painting uses both 
 in very nearly like proportions. This more extensive use 
 in painting of contrast might be considered of merely theo- 
 retic importance, were it not for that which necessarily 
 accompanies it. This is the fact that the natural appear- 
 ances treated in painting are, as a rule, perceived outside 
 the mind, whereas those referred to in poetry have been 
 already stored inside the mind. Painters and sculptors re- 
 produce scenes or figures perceived in the external world 
 and they do this through using an external medium like 
 canvas or marble. Poets recall what they have heard of 
 events or of men, like a battle or a Wellington, and repro- 
 duce this through using words. Words contain not what is 
 external to the mind, but what is in it. The bearing of 
 these facts is extremely important when considered in 
 relation to the conceptions appropriate for treatment in 
 the different arts. As applied to poetry, the facts seem to 
 rule out of its domain any descriptive details other than 
 those of such prominence that a man observing them 
 might reasonably be supposed to have been able to retain 
 them in memory, — other than details — to state it differently 
 — which have been stored in the mind, and are brought to 
 consciousness because, apparently, the most important 
 factors entering into the general mental effect. In accord- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 229 
 
 ance with this principle, it was shown in Chapter XXII. 
 of the author's "Poetry as a Representative Art" that 
 the descriptions of Homer are all mental, fragmentary, 
 specific, and typical. As contrasted with poetry, painting 
 and sculpture represent not that which is inside the mind, 
 and may be recalled in the order of time, but that which is 
 outside the mind, and may be perceived in the arrangements 
 of space. Poetry, though it should not directly represent 
 space, yet may indirectly suggest it. Painting and sculp- 
 ture may suggest, though they should not directly repre- 
 sent, time. — Essentials of Esthetics, x. 
 
 PAINTING VS. POETRY. CONSCIOUS VS. INSTINCTIVE WORK 
 
 IN EACH. 
 
 Painting and sculpture reveal much more plainly than 
 either music or poetry that the mind has been moved by 
 some outward form which they imitate. But they necessi- 
 tate, and, in a sense not true of either of the arts of sound, 
 they show that they necessitate, great conscious effort on 
 the part of the intellect in arranging outlines, in coloring 
 canvases, or in shaping marbles, so as to make the forms 
 which are imitated embody the mind's ideas. If the influ- 
 ence be strong enough, musical melodies and poetic passages 
 seem to spring to the lips instinctively. However strong 
 it be, pictures and statues do not fall into shape except as 
 a result of thoughtful work, which is due to the mind 
 and not to that which affects it from without; work, in 
 other words, in connection with which the ideas within 
 the mind emphasize their own separate existence. — Art 
 in Theory, xvii. 
 
 PAINTING vs. POETRY, SUBJECTS OF EACH {see also POETIC 
 DESCRIPTION). 
 
 Poetry represents phases of consciousness moving, one 
 after another, in time. So its medium of representation is 
 in words which also move. These are peculiarly fitted to 
 present the various consecutive thoughts suggested, as well 
 as the events detailed, in a story. Painting, on the other 
 hand, represents an influence of fixedness such as appeals to 
 the eye. A painter's first impulse is always to represent 
 shapes as he sees them, and hence in space. A child with a 
 pencil in hand, so far as he can draw at all, thinks of nothing 
 but shapes. But once present his mind with the details, 
 whether appealing to the mind or to the eye, of that which 
 
230 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 forms the substance o£ a story, and he is tempted to rep- 
 resent them also with brush or pencil. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, xxvii. 
 
 It need not be inferred that painters can never draw their 
 subjects from poetry, or poets from painting. It need 
 merely be inferred that there should be a difference in the 
 ways in which the two arts treat the same subject. — Idem, 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 PAINTING VS. SCULPTURE, EXPRESSION IN. 
 
 Painting, is better fitted to suggest time than is sculpture. 
 This is so because painting, as a rule, can represent a larger 
 space than sculpture, — a space filled with more objects 
 and figures and indicating, therefore, more interchange 
 between them of cause and effect. . . . We seldom see 
 in a picture a figure that stands out from all surrounding 
 figures, asserting such claims to preeminent and exclusive 
 attention as is common in groups of statuary. Continu- 
 ing this line of thought, we shall soon recall how super- 
 latively we have enjoyed certain statues, for the very 
 reason, apparently, that they were placed so that one 
 could view them apart from anything else, — statues that 
 stand in rows, or in alcoves by themselves. — Essentials of 
 ^Esthetics, x. 
 
 PAINTING VS. SCULPTURE, THEIR SUBJECTS. 
 
 The difference between that which is appropriately 
 represented in painting and in sculpture is very truthfully 
 suggested, though not entirely indicated, by the difference, 
 which all recognize, between the meaning of the terms 
 picturesque and statuesque. The picturesque, as defined 
 on page 280, involves a conception of much and minute 
 variety. And this is just what painting involves. The 
 color that is used in it, and not in sculpture, is never well 
 applied unless it imitates the influences of light and shade 
 in nature to such a degree as to cause slight differences 
 at almost every perceptible point. Besides this, color 
 enables the artist to separate, one from another, and thus 
 to represent clearly, a very large number of small details 
 most of which would be indistinguishable if an attempt 
 were made to indicate them in sculpture. On the other 
 hand, the statuesque involves the conception of something 
 that stands out by itself, — something that, because it has 
 bulk or body, can be looked at from every side. Even 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 231 
 
 when the term applies to the sculpture of mere relief, the 
 solidity of the medium that is used in it, and not in paint- 
 ing, tends to separate every contour from every other by 
 emphatically defined outlines. These outlines, too, must 
 be comparatively few in number and the objects which 
 they delineate comparatively large in size. Thus the 
 limitations of the material used in each of the arts deter- 
 mine the limitations of the subjects which it and it alone 
 can appropriately embody. On account of the minute 
 representative possibilities of color, one can make a paint- 
 ing of a landscape, and can crowd into a small compass 
 a large number of figures and faces, appearing almost 
 immediately beside or behind one another. In sculpture, 
 landscape is wellnigh impossible, and so is any extensive 
 grouping of figures. Even such figures as can be brought 
 together must, owing to the uniformity of color, be very 
 distinctly separated, and, as artistic effects produced 
 through variety of hues are impossible, compensating 
 artistic effects through the use of outlines become impera- 
 tive. Hence parallelism, continuity, balance, symmetry', 
 and kindred methods of aesthetically accenting the require- 
 ments of contour become more prominent. — The Represen- 
 tative Significance of Form, xxvii. 
 
 A picture and a statue may both imitate the same model. 
 When we look at the former, we instinctively think of the 
 model. When we look at the latter, we often think only of 
 the effects that human nature in general has had upon form 
 in the abstract. While painting may represent only a 
 person, sculpture is more likely to represent a personage. — 
 Art in Theory, xix. 
 
 Painting that depicts leaves, flowers, fruit, and children, 
 or grown people as doing very trifling things, may rank 
 high, because manifesting a high degree of skill in drawing 
 and coloring. The more minute the factors with which both 
 of these deal, the more difficult, often, is it to attain success. 
 Besides this, almost any scene which painting depicts 
 includes a very large number of different objects; and 
 these to an extent may compensate in quantity for what 
 the general subject lacks in quaUty. But in sculpture the 
 conditions are different. There is almost no comparison 
 between carving the wreath of a column's capital and the 
 
 » See chart on page 89 of this volume. 
 
232 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 contour of a human body; and, if the latter have to be 
 carved at all, the difficulty of the work, the permanence 
 of the material, and the fact that the body, when com- 
 pleted, is to be the sole object of attention, all combine 
 to make it seem especially inappropriate to have it repre- 
 sent a trivial subject. It ought to be a dignified subject, 
 or, in lieu of that, at least a subject treated in a dignified 
 way. As for the dignity of the subject, notice that, in a 
 sense not true of painting, it is appropriate that the figure 
 delineated should be represented in a form greatly exag- 
 gerated. Very large pictures . . . sometimes offend us 
 by their very size; and it is almost impossible to conceive 
 of an attractive picture with figures of heroic proportions. 
 But the "Moses" of Angelo or the "Liberty Enlighten- 
 ing the World" in New York do not offend us. On the 
 contrary, very small pictures, as in miniatures, are often 
 extremely pleasing and valuable. But most of us cannot 
 avoid feeling, when we see the bronze doors of the Capitol 
 at Washington, that the small size of the figures makes 
 the work expended upon them hardly worth while, because 
 such subjects could have been represented so much more 
 satisfactorily in pictures. — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, xxvii. 
 
 An art is always fulfilling its best possibilities when it is 
 doing that which it and it alone can do. What painting can 
 do and sculpture cannot, is to produce effects through the 
 use of pigments. What sculpture can do and painting can- 
 not, is to produce effects through the use of bulk, including 
 outlines representing length, breadth, and thickness. — Idemy 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 PARTHENON, THE, AS A MODEL. 
 
 It is ordinarily supposed that the Parthenon represents 
 the highest point of perfection reached by Greek archi- 
 tecture. It does, and yet it was the beginning of a decline, 
 just as we recognize to have been the case with the poetry 
 of Milton and the music of Wagner, when we notice the 
 effects that the works of each produced upon their followers 
 and imitators. The Parthenon is the building which mod- 
 ern people have studied and imitated most in their efforts 
 to understand and apply the Greek methods. They ought 
 to have it impressed upon their minds that those who first 
 began to study and imitate it were the ones who began 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 233 
 
 that very process of degeneracy in art, the current of which 
 it is now supposed by some that a return to Greek methods 
 can stem. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xii. 
 
 PERCEPTIBLE, ART DEALS WITH THE. 
 
 Art either accepts forms as wholes, or it regards them as 
 combined or developed out of their more prominently per- 
 ceptible parts. — The Representative Significance of Form, viii. 
 
 This is the same as to say that art derives its conceptions 
 from the effective features of objects, sometimes from only 
 one feature, but, if from more, in all cases, from those which 
 are the most perceptible. — Idem. 
 
 PERSONAL AND SYMPATHETIC EFFECTS OF ART {sec also 
 GENIUS, INDIVIDUALITY, SUBCONSCIOUS, and SYMPATHY). 
 
 Now we come upon two apparently anomalous facts. 
 One might suppose that representation, exerting, as it 
 does, an indirect influence, would reveal less of an artist's 
 character, and would also appeal less to the sympathies of 
 others, than would presentation, exerting, as it does, a 
 direct influence. But the truth seems to be the contrary. 
 Nor, when we think a moment, will it seem surprising that 
 this is so. As applied to the revelation of character, it is 
 simply a fact that all of us, in determining what a man is 
 in his spirit, intentionally or unintentionally, judge him by 
 what he appears to be in his subconscious rather than in his 
 conscious nature; therefore more by what he unconsciously 
 represents of himself than by what he consciously presents. 
 This is true in every relation of life. No man ever fell in love 
 with a woman because of her words or deeds that he sup- 
 posed attributable to conscious intention. So with the 
 products of art. The most professionally trained dancers 
 and singers who prove fascinating to us do so because of 
 slight unconscious peculiarities of movement in body or 
 voice which are characteristic of them as individuals, and 
 cannot be acquired by another with another personality. 
 This fact is true of the effects of any kind of expression 
 embodied in any kind of form. The chief charm of a melody, 
 poem, painting, or statue, even of a building, often lies in 
 certain subtle touches given to it by its producer uncon- 
 sciously, — ^in characteristics which it is sometimes impossible 
 for the critic to analyze or even to describe. Yet it is these 
 touches that most surely convey the impression of the 
 artist's individuality. Need it be said that they do not 
 
234 AN ART-PHILOSOPUERS CABINET 
 
 present his conscious intention ? They represent his uncon- 
 scious method, a method that he cannot, so to speak, avoid. 
 Closely connected with the apparent anomaly just con- 
 sidered is the other of which mention was made. One 
 might suppose that indirect representation — i. e. expres- 
 sion made through the use of forms not at all associated 
 with those of one's own body — would appeal less to the 
 sympathies of others than would direct expression, or 
 what has been termed presentation. But this supposition, 
 again, would not be entirely correct. Owing to the per- 
 sonality of effect indicated in the preceding paragraph as 
 characterizing representative expression, this latter some- 
 times makes a stronger appeal to the sympathies than 
 does the other form of expression. We all, to an extent, 
 recognize this fact when we quote with approval the maxim 
 that actions speak louder than words. As applied to art, 
 when methods characterizing a product have been made 
 characteristic of an artist's personality, others must be 
 influenced by his work as they would be by his person- 
 ality. But how are they influenced by this ? How do any of 
 us come to have an ideal — or come to take an interest of 
 any kind in anything — that is peculiar to the personality 
 of another ? There is but one answer : It is through our sym- 
 pathies — a word which, as thus used, applies primarily to 
 our emotions, but includes also our thoughts, as influenced 
 by these. — Essentials of Esthetics, viii. 
 
 PERSONALITY AND UNIVERSALITY OF REPRESENTATION. 
 
 At first thought, the principle previously stated, namely, 
 that the art-product is successful in the degree in which the 
 artist represents his surroundings in such ways as to mani- 
 fest his own personality, by which must often be meant his 
 individual thoughts and emotions, seems to conflict with 
 the principle just unfolded, which attributes his success to 
 the degree in which the conceptions that he embodies are 
 not merely his own, but those of others. Second thought, 
 however, will convince us that the two principles conflict 
 only seemingly. In practical experience, no one has any 
 difficulty in recognizing the individuality of a Raphael and 
 a Shakespeare in almost every product of their skill ; yet this 
 does not prevent the product from being an accurate repre- 
 sentation of nature as viewed by all men. Painters, sculp- 
 tors, dramatists, are greatest when most thoroughly 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 235 
 
 themselves, yet greatest also when their minds, like mirrors, 
 reflect their surroundings in such ways as to conform 
 most exactly to the observations of people in general. 
 The reason for this, of course, is that no conceptions of 
 the meanings of nature can be universally accepted, except 
 so far as they have been derived from the appearances of 
 nature as universally perceived. — Idem. 
 
 PERSONALITY AS REPRESENTED IN ART {seC EXPRESSION FOR 
 
 expression's sake). 
 Art of the highest rank, in addition to representing rather 
 than imitating the phenomena of nature, and to repre- 
 senting rather than communicating thoughts and emo- 
 tions, must represent rather than present the personality 
 of the artist, meaning here by the word personality that 
 combination of spirit and body which belongs to oneself 
 as an individual, and to no one else. To understand 
 why personality should be represented rather than pre- 
 sented, let us recall, for a moment, what was said in Chapter 
 III. There, the impulse to art was attributed to life-force 
 or energy issuing from the subconscious or spiritual nature, 
 and striving to embody itself in the material. We all know 
 that the spiritual itself cannot appear, — it can merely repre- 
 sent itself in the material. At the same time, of course, 
 representation is involved, to some extent, in every form of 
 expression. All thoughts and emotions, as they exist in the 
 mind, are inaudible and invisible, and, in order to be com- 
 rnunicated to others, they must be symbolized through sights 
 and sounds borrowed from nature. But there is a different 
 use of these latter in ordinary expression, and in that of art. 
 In ordinary expression, it is sufficient that the thoughts and 
 emotions should be clearly presented. Upon artistic ex- 
 pression, as in that of a poem or a statue, years of labor 
 are frequently expended in order to secure a result beyond 
 that of mere clearness of expression. Upon what is it that 
 the artist, in such cases, expends his labor? Of course it 
 must be upon that which the expression contains in addition 
 to the thoughts and emotions. What does it contain in 
 addition to these? Nothing more, certainly, than the 
 expressional factors. As it is not the thoughts and emo- 
 tions, it must be the expressional factors that are intended 
 to be emphasized; and when we recall that it is the expres- 
 sional factors that are repeated in art, and to what an extent 
 
236 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 all art involves repetition, and that, as a rule, repetition 
 necessarily emphasizes, we shall recognize the truth of 
 this inference. Now notice that these effects will be 
 emphatically produced in the degree alone in which the 
 material forms which one uses in his art are not those 
 belonging to his own material body. Every man gives 
 expression to his spirit through using his own body. To 
 give such expression in the most emphatic way, one must 
 do it in an exceptional way; and this can be done alone 
 when, unlike ordinary men, he uses forms that are not an 
 organic part of his own nature (see page lo). Evidently, 
 too, in this case, the external material forms thus used 
 cannot be said to present — they merely represent — himself. 
 — Idem. 
 
 PERSONALITY, EFFECTS OF, IN ART. 
 
 In all the arts, as we know, it is these effects, manifested 
 in what the artist puts into his product or leaves out of it, 
 that largely determine its quality, that differentiate, for 
 instance, a poet from a reporter, or a painter from a photo- 
 grapher. The same principle is illustrated in every relation- 
 ship in the world in which one life touches other lives. 
 It is the bringing of one's personality to bear upon his sur- 
 roundings, that makes a man's form better than a carcass, 
 reveals a spirit inside of a body, and proves that life, in any 
 sphere, is really worth the living. — Essay on Music as 
 Related to Other Arts. 
 
 PERSPECTIVE vs. PROPORTION (see also GENERAL AND DISTANT, 
 
 and PROPORTION vs. perspective). 
 
 Perspective, to which several chapters are devoted, has to 
 do with the methods of arranging real outlines and with 
 them, of course, measurements, so as to have them pro- 
 duce a certain desired visual result, whereas proportion 
 has to do with the measurements as they appear in the 
 result after perspective has produced it. — Proportion and 
 Harmony of Line and Color, Preface. 
 
 Though in nature the measurements of an object may ful- 
 fil the requirements of proportion, they may not, owing 
 to the operation of the laws of perspective, fulfil them in 
 the image which this object produces on the retina; and, 
 vice versa, though in nature the measurements may not 
 fulfil the requirements of proportion, they may, neverthe- 
 less, owing to the operations of the laws of perspective, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 237 
 
 fulfil them in this image. In short, as applied to propor- 
 tion as to many other artistic features, a work of art, 
 whether a painting, a statue, or a building, has to be judged 
 by what may be termed, and is, in this sense, its subjective 
 effect after it has begun to influence the eye and mind. — 
 Idem. IV. 
 
 But enough has now been said to verify the statement 
 that the ancient architects in order to fulfil both visual 
 and aesthetic, both physiological and psychical, require- 
 ments erected their buildings with primary reference to 
 their general effects when seen from some definite point 
 or points at a distance. In connection with this it has 
 been shown also that these architects differed materially 
 with reference to the particular methods through which 
 to secure these effects, arriving at their conclusions, prob- 
 ably, as a result of many individual experiences and ex- 
 periments. 
 
 Since the printing of the first edition of this book, Pro- 
 fessor W. H. Goodyear has discovered that the methods 
 attributed in this discussion to only the ancient Greeks, 
 the Egyptians, and the Romans, were used also by the early 
 Gothic architects. He himself has measured eighty-five 
 of their churches in Italy which have floors rising between 
 the front door and the chancel, sometimes, three feet, while, 
 often, the successive key-stones of the arches between the 
 nave and the aisles descend in the same direction, — evi- 
 dently to increase the effect of distance according to the laws 
 of perspective. To what extent the same methods are 
 exemplified in the Gothic churches of northern Europe, has 
 not yet been determined. — Idem, xv. 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL TREATMENT OF ART IN AMERICA. 
 
 Owing to a lack of breadth and balance characterizing 
 the practical limitations of American culture, a man here 
 who tries to treat art philosophically finds his way blocked 
 at the very threshold of his undertaking by two almost 
 insurmountable obstacles. One is that few of our philo- 
 sophers have had sufficient aesthetic training to be interested 
 in that which concerns art ; and the other is that few of our 
 artists — including our art-critics, though there are note- 
 worthy exceptions — have had sufficient philosophical train- 
 ing to be interested in that which concerns philosophy. 
 Accordingly, as a rule, the philosopher never looks at the 
 
238 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 art-book at all; and the art-critic, on whom the public 
 rely for information concerning it, does so merely because 
 he cannot dodge what is tossed directly at him as a reviewer ; 
 but the little that he sees of it he usually misapprehends 
 and very frequently misrepresents. — Rhythm and Harmony 
 in Poetry and Music, Preface. 
 
 PITCH, AN ELEMENT BOTH IN MUSIC AND POETRY (see olso 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF PITCH) 
 
 As most of us know, science has ascertained that all 
 musical sounds result from regularly recurring vibrations 
 caused by cords, pipes, reeds, or other agencies. About 
 thirty-three of these vibrations per second produce the low- 
 est tone used in music, and about three thousand nine 
 hundred and sixty, the highest. That the number of vibra- 
 tions in any note may be increased and its pitch made 
 higher, it is necessary to lessen the length or size of the 
 cord, or of whatever causes the vibrations. When the 
 vibrating cord is lessened by just one half, the tone pro- 
 duced is separated from its former tone by an interval of 
 sound which in music is termed an octave. Between the 
 two extremes of pitch forming the octave, eleven half 
 tones, as they are called, caused by sounds resulting from 
 different lengths of the cord, between its whole length 
 and its half length, have been selected, for reasons to be 
 given in another place, and arranged in what is termed a 
 musical scale. These half-tones, seven of them constitut- 
 ing the dOy re, me, fa, sol, la, and si of the gamut, are all 
 that can be used in music between the two notes form- 
 ing the octave. There are about seven octaves ... of 
 pitch that are used in music. In the speaking voice 
 only about two octaves are used, so that in this regard its 
 range is more narrow than that of music. Between any two 
 octave notes, however, the speaking voice can use whatever 
 sounds it chooses ; it is not confined to the few tones that 
 constitute the musical scale. For instance, the note of the 
 bass voice called by musicians C, is sounded by producing 
 one hundred and thirty-two vibrations a second, and C of 
 the octave above by producing two hundred and sixty-four 
 vibrations. Between the two, therefore, it is possible to 
 conceive of forming one hundred and thirty-one distinct 
 tones, each vibrating once a second oftener than the sound 
 below it. It is possible, too, to conceive that the speaking 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 239 
 
 voice can use any of these tones. Music, however, between 
 the same octave notes, can use but eleven tones. There- 
 fore, the different degrees of pitch used in speech, though 
 not extending over as many octaves, are much more numer- 
 ous than those used in music. For this reason, the melo- 
 dies of speech cannot be represented by any system through 
 which we now write music. There are not enough notes 
 used in music to render it possible to make the represen- 
 tation accurate. Nor probably would much practical 
 benefit be derived from an attempt to construct a system 
 of speech-notation; though it, like other things, may be 
 among the possibilities of acoustic development in the 
 future. 
 
 In applying to poetic form the principles determining 
 pitch in elocution, let us take up first those in accordance 
 with which certain syllables are uttered on a high or low 
 key. The former key seems suggested by vowels formed 
 at the mouth's front, as in beet, bate, bet, bit, bat, etc. ; the 
 latter by back vowels, as in fool, full, foal, fall, etc. The 
 best of reasons underlies this suggestion. It is the fact that 
 the pronunciation of every front or back vowel-sound 
 naturally tends to the production of a high or low musical 
 note. Bonders first made the discovery that the cavity 
 of the mouth, when whispering each of the different vow- 
 els, is tuned to a different pitch. This fact gives the 
 vowel its peculiar quality. Instruments, moreover, have 
 been constructed, by means of which most sounds can be 
 analyzed, and their component tones distinctly and defi- 
 nitely noted; and now the theory is accepted that the 
 voice, when pronouncing vowel-sounds, at whatever key in 
 the musical scale it may start them, has a tendency to sug- 
 gest — if not through its main, or what is termed its prime 
 tone, at least through associated, or what are termed its 
 partial tones — that pitch which is peculiar to the vowel 
 uttered. — Poetry as a Representative Art, viii. 
 
 From these facts two inferences follow : First, that when- 
 ever two syllables, whether containing sounds of different 
 vowels or consonants or of both, are uttered in succession, 
 we have a succession of tones that differ in pitch. This is 
 the same as to say that whenever we use consecutively 
 words that are not pronounced exactly alike, we produce, 
 in just as true a sense as when singing a melody, an effect 
 
240 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 of passing from one pitch to another. The second infer- 
 ence is that whenever sounds of two different vowels or 
 of vowels and consonants that constitute a syllable are 
 uttered simultaneously, they produce a blending of tones 
 that differ in pitch, or, in other words, an effect corre- 
 sponding to that which is heard in musical harmony. 
 Indeed, the music of the speaking voice, as distinguished 
 from the singing, is characterized mainly by the harmony 
 that results from this blending of the consonant-sounds 
 with the vowel-sounds, the latter being often in singing 
 the only sounds that are heard, and always the only sounds 
 that are made prominent. Of course, too, there is a sense 
 in which the utterance of the component parts of any 
 single syllable, especially when these are the two vowels 
 of a diphthong, resembles more an effect of quality than of 
 harmony. But sometimes, as in the case of an inflection 
 which begins at one pitch and ends at another, there are 
 suggestions of harmony. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry 
 and Music, xii. 
 
 PLAY, DRAMATIC (see MORALITY AS INFLUENCED BY DRAMAs). 
 
 It is a law of our nature — that the sayings and scenes by 
 which we are surrounded produce a much greater effect upon 
 our conduct than do any deductions with reference to them 
 that we may draw in our own minds. This is the principle 
 that a thinker is obliged to apply to theatric performances. 
 It is the language, the picture of life — in short, the play that 
 is the thing of chief importance — this wholly irrespective of 
 any possible moral that thinking can draw from it. — Essay 
 on Art and Morals. 
 
 PLAY-IMPULSE IN ART {see ARCHITECTURE ARTISTIC, ART IN 
 
 THEORY, and EXPRESSION FOR EXPRESSION'S SAKE). 
 
 PLEASURE AND PAIN, BOTH PRODUCED BY ART. 
 
 If the phases of expression which we find in art, and which 
 depend on such conditions as physical temperament and 
 personality, be recognized to involve the experience and 
 consequent communication of sentiment, — a term imply- 
 ing thought as prompted by emotion — i. c, an intense 
 degree of activity of both thought and emotion — then it 
 seems logical to recognize also that very often art must 
 impart great pleasure. For of what is pleasure a result, if 
 not of activity that is unconscious of control ? Knowledge 
 limits both our feeling and our thought, but, in the degree 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 841 
 
 in which we are indulging in sentiment, the limits are 
 removed, and we are left free to feel and to imagine what 
 we choose. From its very nature, therefore, sentiment 
 implies a certain degree of pleasure. But it brings con- 
 scious freedom so far only as this can be experienced in 
 thought . . . and we may derive less acute enjoyment from 
 mental than from physical pleasure. For the same reason 
 also, when a work of art enlists our sympathy with the 
 suffering and the fallen (and, in the degree of the breadth of 
 our culture, with more subtle phases of human weakness 
 and wretchedness), the consciousness which we often have 
 that no material or, so to speak, bodily effort of ours can 
 avert troubles of this kind, imparts to the freedom even 
 of sentiment a limitation that results in the effect of pathos 
 or of horror. To say, therefore, that the objective result 
 of the artistic tendency, as affected by the physical con- 
 ditions underlying temperament and personality, is senti- 
 ment, enables us to give full recognition to whatever truth 
 there may be in the arguments of those who claim that the 
 aim of art is pleasure; and it enables us also, at the same 
 time, to explain satisfactorily, as these arguers do not, both 
 why other things sometimes afford more pleasure than art 
 and why art itself sometimes, as in the pathetic and the 
 tragic, includes the painful. — The Representative Signifi- 
 cance of Forniy xv. 
 
 POET, HIS RELATIONS WITH NATURE. 
 
 Language involves, as we have found, a representation 
 of mental facts and processes through the use of analogous 
 external facts and processes, which alone are apprehensible 
 to others, and which alone, therefore, can make others 
 apprehend our thoughts. But facts and processes fitted 
 to furnish such representations may be perceived on every 
 side of us in the objects and operations of what we term 
 nature. It is the poet, however, who is most conscious 
 of these analogies, for he, instead of accepting those noticed 
 by others and embodied in conventional words, is con- 
 stantly seeking for new ones and using these. To the poet, 
 and the reader of poetry, therefore, all nature appears to be, 
 in a peculiar sense, a representation, a repetition, a 
 projection into the realm of matter, of the immaterial 
 processes of thought within the mind. — Poetry as a Repre- 
 sentative Art, XXVIII. 
 
 x6 
 
242 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 POET, INDEBTED TO BOTH TEMPERAMENT AND CULTURE. 
 
 By temperament many are constitutionally unqualified 
 to give any utterance to instinctive promptings, to throw 
 themselves with abandon into anything; but, granted 
 this power, it is often the accuracy, breadth, and largeness 
 of the cultivation received that determine the truth, com- 
 prehensiveness, and greatness of the result. A wholly 
 uncultivated man may produce a perfect stanza or sketch; 
 but usually not a long poem or a painting. — The Represen- 
 tative Significance of Form, xiii. 
 
 POET, THINKS IN IMAGES. 
 
 The poet naturally thinks through the use of images. He 
 seems to see outwardly the things that he describes. He 
 seems to hear outwardly the things that he utters. — Essay 
 on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 POETIC DESCRIPTION {see olso PAINTING VS. POETRY). 
 
 In the phase of consciousness represented in poetry, the 
 man thinks of certain scenes in the external world because 
 they are suggested, not by anything that he is actually, at 
 the time, perceiving there, but by his own recollections of 
 them as they exist in thought. To one likening his action 
 in a battle to that of Wellington at Waterloo and of Grant 
 at Vicksburg, these men are not really present, only ideally 
 so. As objects of thought they are not outside of his mind, 
 they are in it. In the mood represented in painting, the 
 man thinks of external scenes because they are actually 
 before him. He is clearly conscious therefore of two differ- 
 ent sources of thought — one within, the other without. The 
 objective world is really present. If he wish to represent 
 this fact, therefore, he cannot use merely words. Words 
 can contain only what is in the mind, or ideally present. 
 In order to represent in any true sense what is really 
 present he must use what is really before him, i. e., an 
 indisputably external medium, as in painting, sculpture, 
 and architecture. . . . Accordingtothedistinction just made, 
 any descriptive details are out of place in poetry other 
 than those of such prominence that a man observing them 
 may reasonably be supposed to be able to retain them in 
 memory; — other than those, to state it differently, which 
 are illustrative in their nature, and truly representative, 
 therefore, of ideas within the mind as excited to conscious 
 activity by influences from without. There is, of course, a 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 243 
 
 certain interest, though sometimes not above that which is 
 merely botanic and topographic, awakened by verbal 
 descriptions of flowers and fields such as a painter on the 
 spot would be able to give while scrutinizing them in order 
 to depict them. But this interest may be just as different 
 from that which, in the circumstances, is demanded, as it 
 would be were it merely didactic or dogmatic; and a poet 
 with sensibilities keen enough to feel the differences between 
 essentially different motives will be loath to yield to the 
 promptings of that which is essentially not poetic. He will 
 refrain from indulging in the kind of writing just indicated, 
 not because it is too difficult for him to master; not because 
 though living at the present time he is unaware that the 
 prevailing taste approves of it, or that, if he fail to follow its 
 whims, he will be accused of having too little love of nature 
 or sympathy with it ; but because he wishes to be true to his 
 art, as he recognizes that all the greatest masters have been; 
 and because he knows that, when the present fashion passes 
 away, as it surely will, only that poetry will live which is 
 poetic in the most distinctive sense. — Art in Theory, xix. 
 
 All lengthy descriptions or declamatory passages that 
 have nothing to do directly with giving definiteness, char- 
 acter, and progress to the plot, detract from the interest 
 of the poem, considered as a whole. The effect of these 
 things upon the form is the same as that of rubbish thrown 
 into the current of a stream — it impedes the movement, 
 and renders the water less transparent. This is the chief 
 reason why the works of the dramatists of the age of the 
 history of our literature commonly called classical, like 
 Dryden, Addison, Rowe, Home, and Brooke, notwithstand- 
 ing much that is excellent in their writings, have not been 
 able to maintain their popularity. — Poetry as a Representa- 
 tive Art, XXII. 
 
 POETIC FORM, ARTIFICIALITY IN. 
 
 Poetic form, for instance, as used by Shakespeare, Cole- 
 ridge, Scott, and Burns, was characterized by apparent ease 
 and facility. Whatever art there was in it, if not wholly 
 concealed, at least called attention, not to itself, but to the 
 thought and feeling for the expression of which alone it is of 
 any use. It is true that, in the times of Queen Anne, form 
 like this was considered insufficient for the purpose. It is 
 also true, though the fact is not often acknowledged, that in 
 
244 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 our own times there is a similar opinion. But we have 
 learned that the styles of Pope and Dry den were artificial. 
 What will our successors learn about our styles ? Certainly, 
 if those older poets cultivated an unnatural rhythmic swing, 
 ours are cultivating an equally unnatural melodic swag, 
 the straightforward movement, which alone is logically 
 appropriate in an art, the medium of which is a series of 
 effects in time, having given place to a succession of side- 
 heaves, occasioned by endeavors to lug along heavy epithets. 
 In the overloaded form, there is scarcely more drift, which 
 used to be considered essential in poetry, than in a fishing 
 smack with every line on board trailing in the water, and 
 every hook at the end of it stuck fast in seaweed. From 
 the levy made upon every possibility of ornamentation 
 within reach, one would suppose that the contemporary 
 muse were the mistress of a South Sea Islander, who never 
 sees beauty where there is no paint. — Essay on The Func- 
 tion of Technique. 
 
 POETIC FORM ESSENTIAL TO POETIC EFFECT (see olso 
 
 technique). 
 Poetry is more than thought; it is more even than a strong 
 and metrical expression of thought. The mere fact that a 
 girl was drowned on the sands of Dee, or that three fisher- 
 men were lost at sea, is not enough to account for the interest 
 that we take in Charles Kingsley's ** O Mary, Go and Call the 
 Cattle Home, ' ' and ' ' The Fishermen. " It is his poetry that 
 interests us ; and by his poetry we mean the representative 
 way in which he has told these tales. . . . The important 
 thing that needs to be borne in mind in judging of poetry, is 
 that it is an art, and partakes of the nature of the fine arts ; 
 and that, as such, its one essential is a representative form 
 appealing to a man through that which causes him to admire 
 the beautiful. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xxvii. 
 
 Not all, but some of these quotations show us that poetic 
 effect is not dependent wholly upon the presence or absence 
 of poetic thought. On the contrary, that which in verse 
 charms the ear, fixes attention, remains in memory, and 
 passes into a precept or proverb, is sometimes dependent for 
 its popularity almost entirely upon consecutive effects of 
 sound, so arranged as to flow into one another and together 
 form a unity. Certainly, in many cases, the same thought, 
 expressed in sounds less satisfactorily arranged, would not 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 245 
 
 be remembered or repeated. — Rhythm and Harmony in 
 Poetry and Music, vii. 
 
 POETIC FORM, EXCESSIVE ATTENTION TO. 
 
 The peculiarity of poetry consists in the fact that its 
 medium is composed of words, which words, in turn, are 
 forms of thought. If, therefore, attention be directed 
 too exclusively to the form as form, the thoughts, which 
 alone give it real value, will not produce their legitimate 
 effects. For this reason, there is always an inartistic 
 tendency in any excessive use of alliteration, assonance, 
 or rhyme. . . . There is a sense in which all art-products 
 are artistic in the degree in which they are natural. They 
 appear most natural, of course, when they appear most 
 spontaneous. But too great attention expended upon the 
 mere selection of letter-sounds interferes with spontaneity 
 of effect. Excessive alliteration, assonance, and rhyme 
 suggest calculation, contrivance, effort, and this of a char- 
 acter not very choice in quality. They are all in themselves 
 comparatively easy to produce; and, unless entering into 
 the formation of a word exactly fitted to convey the mean- 
 ing that is intended, they suggest an unwarranted sacrifice 
 of sense to the mere jingling of sounds, and, therefore, a 
 cheap form of ornamentation. — Rhythm and Harmony in 
 Poetry and Music, ix. 
 
 POETIC FORM IN POEMS CONSIDERED AS WHOLES. 
 
 A poem is a development of language, and language is a 
 representation of thought, and thought always involves 
 motion. A poem, therefore, is a representation of thought 
 and also of motion, or, rather, of thought in motion. But 
 more than this, it is a single art-product; therefore it must 
 represent a single thought in a single motion. This implies, 
 first, one thought to which all the other thoughts of the 
 work must be related by way of complement, or subordi- 
 nated by way of principality; and second, one motion of 
 thought — i. e., one thought moving in one direction, having 
 one beginning from which all the movements of all the 
 related and subordinated thoughts of the entire poem 
 start; a middle through which they all flow; and an end 
 toward which they all tend, — The Genesis of Art Form, vi. 
 
 In speaking of the plan of his "Excursion, " Wordsworth, 
 in several places, tells us that his conception of it was that of 
 a cathedral to which his minor poems should stand related 
 
246 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 like chapels opening from the aisles. In other words, he 
 acknowledges that a method of thought or expression not 
 natural to poetry, but to another art, an art, too, necessi- 
 tating a body filling space, was present to his mind when 
 considering the general form of his poem. So far as this 
 method had influence, his motive, therefore, was that not 
 of the poet but of the architect. A poem m.odelled after 
 a cathedral ! One might as well talk of a picture modelled 
 after a symphony, or a statue after a running stream. To 
 be sure, if the stream were frozen stiff, and so far lifeless, 
 the statue might image it. Only so far as thought were 
 in a similar condition could a poem that was really like a 
 cathedral, embody it. — Representative Significance of Form, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 This requirement of organic form, as manifested by the 
 arrangement of the chief features of an artistic product, 
 differs not whether a poem be short or long. The degree 
 of excellence in its conception is measured by the degree in 
 which it presents an image of the phase of life with which it 
 deals in a distinct form, by which is meant a form in which 
 are preserved the organic relationships of all the parts to 
 one another and to the whole. When, in speaking of a 
 long poem, such as the ** Iliad" or ** Paradise Lost, " '* Ham- 
 let, "or "Faust," we commend its unity and progress, or 
 the consistency, continuity, and completeness with which 
 certain ideas of which it treats are developed, we mean 
 merely that the poem as a whole presents in distinct organic 
 form a whole image of that which it is designed to present. 
 The difference, therefore, between the ability to produce 
 a long poem and a short one, or what is sometimes the same 
 thing, a great poem and a small one, is simply of the same 
 nature as that which exists between a high and a small 
 order of intellect in other departments, — a difference in the 
 ability to hold the thoughts persistently to a single subject 
 until all its parts have been marshalled into order. — The 
 Genesis of Art-Form, vi. 
 
 None of these poems deserve to be placed in the highest 
 rank, because they lack the qualities which, as we have 
 found, must characterize the products of an art, whose 
 form is apprehensible in time. They lack the qualities 
 because they lack the form that necessarily would show 
 these; and they lack the form — i. e., the representative form. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 247 
 
 •^because their authors did not start to compose them with 
 representative conceptions. When Dante, Shakespeare, and 
 Milton first conceived their greatest works, it must have 
 been a picture that appeared to loom before their imagina- 
 tions. It is doubtful whether Wordsworth, Cowper, and 
 Campbell thought of anything except an argument. — Poetry 
 as a Representative Art, xxvii. 
 
 POETIC FORM, ITS INFLUENCE UPON THOUGHT. 
 
 When a man polishes a diamond its beauty is due, in a 
 sense, to its appearance, and to what his polishing has added 
 to its appearance; but, in another sense, the beauty is due 
 still more to the surrounding light which his polishing has 
 enabled the diamond to reflect. The poet who never 
 allows himself to use an imperfect rhyme, or, except for 
 reasons in the sense, to use words containing consecutive 
 letter-sounds that do not harmonize, is likely, on account 
 of the very attention that he pays to the expression, to 
 make the expression seem worthy of attention; and, not 
 only so, but to make that which is expressed seem worthy of 
 attention. We wonder, at times, why certain modern poets 
 prefer to write plays in blank verse. Most of us ascribe the 
 reason to the influence of tradition. But there is a better 
 reason than this. Foot and line impose limits upon expres- 
 sional form. The necessity for conciseness in the language 
 impels to conciseness in the thought. Thought like light 
 never becomes really brilliant, never flashes, except from a 
 form in which its rays are concentrated. The sun's influ- 
 ence on a bright day is pervasive; it is everywhere; but its 
 beams never sparkle from the whole surface of a pool or 
 lake, — only from places where in this they touch some single 
 small drop, or collection of small drops. — Essay on Music 
 as Related to Other Arts. 
 
 POETIC FORM, ITS RICHNESS COMPENSATING FOR POVERTY 
 
 IN IDEAS. 
 
 As this poetry lies concealed in ordinary life, the poet 
 is compelled to do more than simply to represent ordinary 
 life. He must make this appear to be more than it seems 
 to be; and he must do so by making more of his poetic form 
 than can be done in direct representation. We all know 
 how ladies taking up a temporary residence for the summer 
 in small seaside cottages, erected without paint or plaster, 
 make up for the lack of other beautifying elements, by 
 
248 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 tacking all over the walls Japanese fans and scarfs of 
 innumerable hues, intermingled with wreaths of evergreen 
 and myrtle; or how, when they rent furnished houses in 
 which the colors of the carpets, chairs, and wall papers do 
 not harmonize, they spread tidies, afghans, and ornaments 
 of all possible shades over sofas and mantles, so as to pro- 
 duce effects pleasing by way of combination and variety, 
 where it is impossible to have simplicity and unity. All this 
 is an illustration of cheap ornamentation. Yet it is justi- 
 fiable in such circumstances. The tendency producing it is 
 exercised unjustifiably only when an architect or uphol- 
 sterer, with an opportunity to rely upon more worthy 
 methods, tries to produce similar results not as means but 
 as ends. Illustrative representation in poetry is often pro- 
 duced by bringing together all sorts of elements, very 
 much as the Japanese fans are brought together in sea- 
 side cottages; and it is justifiable when it is necessary to 
 make thought attractive which otherwise would not be so. 
 To illustrate how poetry can make this sort of thought 
 attractive, take this description of a luncheon in Tenny- 
 son's "Audley Court." In most of the passage we have 
 direct representation; but all the better for this reason, it 
 serves to illustrate what I mean by saying that form can 
 make the unpoetic seem poetic. What could be more 
 unpoetic or commonplace than a meal? Yet notice how 
 by the introduction of picturesque elements like "wrought 
 with horse and hound," "dusky," "costly made," "Like 
 fossils of the rock," "golden"^ "Imbedded," and the 
 graphic account of the conversation, — all such as could be 
 observed by one looking on, the poet has rendered the 
 whole poetic. It is an admirable illustration of a legiti- 
 mate way in which by richness of form a poet can make 
 up for poverty of ideas. — Poetry as a Representative Art, 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 POETRY AS AN ART (see also REPRESENTATION, A 
 CHARACTERISTIC OF ^.STHETIC ART). 
 
 Poetry is acknowledged to be an art, ranking, like music, 
 with the fine arts, — painting, sculpture, and architecture. 
 It is acknowledged, also, that the peculiar characteristic of 
 all these arts is that they have what is termed form (from 
 the Lsitin forma, an external appearance) . This form, more- 
 over, is aesthetic (from the Greek ataOrji^q, perceived by 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 249 
 
 the senses) ; and it is presented in such a way as to address 
 the senses through the agency of an artist, who, in order 
 to attain his end, represents the sounds or sights of nature. 
 All these arts, therefore, in a broad sense of the term, are 
 representative. What they represent is partly the pheno- 
 mena of nature and partly the thoughts of man; partly that 
 which is imitated from things perceived in the world with- 
 out, and partly that which is conceived in the mind of him 
 who, in order to express his conception, produces the imi- 
 tation. Both of these factors are present in all artistic 
 forms, and cause them to be what they are. That painting 
 and sculpture represent, is recognized by all; that music 
 and architecture do the same, needs to be proved to most 
 men. As for poetry, with which we are now to deal, all 
 perceive that it contains certain representative elements; 
 but few are aware to what an extent these determine 
 everything in it that is distinctive and excellent. — Idemy i. 
 
 "poetry as a representative art, analysis of the 
 
 BOOK. " 
 
 {Recapitulation:) In the volume entitled "Poetry as a 
 Representative Art," as well as in the essay on "Music 
 as a Representative Art," it is shown, for instance, — to 
 mention only a few particulars as illustrative of many 
 more, — that, both by way of suggestion and of imitation, 
 solemnity, gravity, and dignity are represented by long 
 syllables and notes causing slowness of movement as con- 
 trasted with the opposite ; that self-assertion and vehemence 
 are represented by distinctness of accent and loudness 
 of tone as contrasted with indistinctness and softness ; that 
 conclusiveness, decision, affirmation, and satisfaction are 
 represented by downward as contrasted with upward 
 movements either in the tunes of verse or of song; and also 
 that feelings like fright, amazement, indignation, contempt, 
 horror, awe, surprise, solicitude, delight, admiration, and 
 determination are each represented by different qualities 
 of tone, whether indicated in vowels and consonants or 
 in musical instruments. 
 
 In the last halves of the essays, both on poetry and on 
 music, the elements which are considered separately in 
 the first halves are examined as representing mental con- 
 ceptions or material surroundings when combined in com- 
 pleted art-products, the purpose being to bring out clearly, 
 
250 AN ART^PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 if possible, as applied to both theme and treatment, whether 
 plain or figurative, the distinctions between the poetic and 
 the prosaic, the musical and the merely sonorous. — Pro- 
 portion and Harmony of Line and Color y xxvi. 
 
 The theory underlying all that has been said thus far 
 is, that poetry is an artistic development of language; its 
 versification, of the pauses of natural breathing; its rhythm 
 and tune, of the accents and inflections of ordinary conver- 
 sation; and the significance in its sounds, of ejaculatory and 
 imitative methods actuating the very earliest efforts of our 
 race at verbal expression. The inference suggested has 
 been that these effects produced by sound are legitimate in 
 poetry, because, like language, and as a part of it, and far 
 more significantly than some forms of it, they represent 
 thought. This inference necessarily carries with it another, 
 which it seems important to emphasize before we leave this 
 part of our subject. It is this, — that no effects produced by 
 sound are legitimate in poetry, which fail in any degree to 
 represent thought. If a man's first impression on entering 
 a picture-gallery come from a suggestion of paint, he may 
 know that he is not in the presence of the masters. So if his 
 first impression on beginning to read verse come from a 
 suggestion of jingle, of sound, or of form of any kind not con- 
 nected in some most intimate way with an appeal to his 
 thinking faculties, he may be well-nigh sure that the lines 
 before him do not entitle their author to a high poetic 
 rank. As I intend to show further on, all artistic poetry 
 must produce the effects of form, but these include impres- 
 sions recognized not only by the outer ear, but also by 
 the inner mind. It is because of the exceeding diffi- 
 culty of perfectly adjusting sound to thought and thought 
 to sound, till, like perfectly attuned strings of a perfect 
 instrument, both strike together in all cases so as to form a 
 single chord of a perfect harmony, that there are so few 
 great poets. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xiii. 
 
 POETRY AS PICTORIAL ?;5. MUSICAL {seealsOVOKI'RY VS. MUSIC, 
 GENESIS OF each). 
 
 In primitive times, the poetry of a word or phrase was 
 determined by its appeal less to what we may term the 
 ear of the mind than to its eye. By words appealing to 
 the ear, I mean those like hiss, rush, roar, rattle, evidently 
 originated by the recognition of resemblances between 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 251 
 
 meaning and sound. By words appealing to the eye, I 
 mean those like upright, shady, forerunner, turnover, used 
 in what is termed a metaphorical sense, and evidently origi- 
 nated in a desire to represent or picture certain conditions 
 or relationships of thought that are not visible, being in- 
 side the mind, through references to conditions or relation- 
 ships that are visible, because in the external world. It is 
 words of this latter kind upon which the earliest poets seem 
 to have depended mainly for their effects. . . . Attempts 
 to cause poetry to represent its meaning through the use of 
 mere sounds were very limited until long after the period 
 of the most ancient poetry. Rhythm, assonance, allitera- 
 tion, rhyme, and particularly what are termed the tunes of 
 verse, and the selection of different metres for the presen- 
 tation of different sentiments and subjects, were all of them 
 more or less late developments in the history of the art. — 
 Essay on Music as Related to the Other Arts. 
 
 The general result is represented in poetry through 
 the use of articulated words, and in music through the use 
 of inarticulated tones. Words represent conceptions which 
 are sufficiently intelligible to be clearly defined. Tones 
 represent conceptional tendencies, which are not always 
 sufficiently intelligible to be clearly defined. The conse- 
 quent difference between the effects of the two arts is this : 
 Both influence the imagination, and, while doing so, conjure 
 pictures which pass in review before it; but while poetry 
 indicates definitely what these pictures shall be, music leaves 
 the mind of the listener free to determine this, the same 
 chords inclining one man, perhaps, to think of his business, 
 and another of his recreation; one of a storm at sea, and 
 another of a battle-field. Now notice a further fact, — that 
 words make thought definite because they appeal to the 
 imagination as is done through the sense not only of hearing 
 but also of sight; and this, not only because they can be 
 printed as well as spoken, but because, as a rule, they refer 
 to objects, as in the cases of hut, farm, road, and horse; or to 
 actions, as in the cases of come, go, stop, and hurry; or to 
 other conditions, as in the cases of near, far, with, and 6y, 
 that can be seen, and that are seen by imagination when- 
 ever the words are used. Musical tones, on the contrary, 
 appeal to imagination almost exclusively as is done through 
 the sense of hearing irrespective of sight. This is a difference 
 
252 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 which is radical, and extremely important. Poetry of the 
 highest order, as we read it, calls attention to visible objects. 
 Through doing so the lines transport us into a realm of 
 imagination, and this not of our own making, as in music, 
 but of the poet's making. So far as he fails to lift us into 
 this realm, and to keep us in it, his poetry fails of one of its 
 most important possibilities. Notice in the following 
 how clean-cut and concrete every figure is, how it stands 
 out in relief, rising visually before the mind, the moment 
 that the words are heard. ... In much modern poetry, musi- 
 cal effects are either entirely substituted for visual effects, 
 or are allowed to overbalance the visual to such an extent 
 as to obscure them. This is one reason why poetry is so 
 little read, and has so little influence, in our own times. — 
 Essentials of ^Esthetics, ix. 
 
 One takes up a magazine or a book of the day, and sees 
 type arranged in the form of verse. He notices in the 
 successions of syllables an abundance of music, perhaps. 
 But the writers have evidently forgotten — not wholly but 
 largely — that which, when poetry began, gave it its nature 
 and value. In what he reads, he finds little visualizing 
 of invisible thought, little formulation of unformed sug- 
 gestions, little projection of definite ideas from regions of in- 
 definiteness, little illuminating truth shining out brilliant as 
 a star from vague depths of apparently unfathomable signi- 
 ficance. He can read page after page of this modern so- 
 called poetry from which it is hardly possible to obtain by 
 mining a single word or phrase such as is everywhere on 
 the surface, and which the most casual glance reveals spark- 
 ling like a gem, not only in the products of the ancient classic 
 poets, but of all the great modern poets like Dante, Shake- 
 speare, and Goethe. — Essay on Music as Related to Other 
 Arts. 
 
 I used to wonder why it was that foreign critics — French 
 and German — almost universally fail to assign very high 
 rank to the poetry of Tennyson, while they do assign it to 
 that of Byron. I am quite sure now that the line of thought 
 just suggested, explains, in part at least, both facts. The 
 depreciation of Tennyson seems to be owing to his over- 
 balancing appeal to the imagination through the methods 
 of sound. Those not familiar with the sounds of English 
 words and the more subtly associated suggestions of these 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 253 
 
 sounds often fail to recognize his artistic qualities. Tenny- 
 son, however, was a great poet. His work very frequently 
 appeals to the imagination through the methods of sight. — 
 Essay on The Literary Artist and Elocution. 
 
 In the following, for instance, all of us will be conscious 
 of a musical flow of syllables, but most of us will not be 
 conscious of seeing images rise in succession before the 
 imagination; we shall not be lifted into that realm of visual 
 surroundings to which it is the peculiar province of poetry 
 to transport one. On thinking it over, too, we shall prob- 
 ably recognize that the same could be said of much of the 
 ordinary — the very ordinary — poetry of the present, though 
 it, too, is often extremely musical. — Idem. 
 
 In poetry, the sounds of the words have little to do with 
 poetic achievement except so far as by being picturesque — 
 individually and collectively — they represent the forms — 
 some of them audible it is true, but most of them merely 
 visible — that are moving forward and carrying to success- 
 ful development that which is in the poet's imagination. 
 I once heard a remark attributed to the French dramatist, 
 Scribe, to the effect that when he was composing he always 
 seemed to be looking at his characters moving before him 
 on the stage. This tendency to think by describing what 
 appears to be seen, is common, in fact, probably necessary, 
 to all those who produce works of the imagination. It is 
 because of the ability to perceive inward experiences as if 
 they were outwardly present, that many great poets — and 
 some of the very greatest — poets like Dante and Milton, 
 have been what we may term natural, if not proficient, 
 mathematicians, or, at least, geometricians. In speaking of 
 University experiences at Cambridge, you may recall what 
 Wordsworth says of 
 
 The pleasures gathered from the rudiments 
 Of geometric science. ... 
 
 — Essay on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 POETRY AS PRODUCING MUSIC. 
 
 There is no doubt, too, that this influence of music upon 
 poetry has, to an extent, been beneficial. At the same time 
 nothing human, whether we apply the term to character 
 or to characteristics, is ever wholly benefited in case external 
 agencies be allowed to master traits peculiar to its own 
 individuality. Poetry whose distinctive features are sub- 
 
254 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 ordinated to those of music or of any other art, may become 
 unpoetic; and if they be only partly subordinated, it may 
 become partly unpoetic. No form of influence that a 
 man can exert in this world is so certain to prove successful 
 that, in his efforts to produce it, he can afford to ignore 
 the importance of concentration. — Essay on Music as 
 Related to Other Arts. 
 
 How can one be expected to appreciate that which has 
 caused poets like Shakespeare, Milton, or Tennyson to put 
 their thoughts into verse, if his ear have never been made 
 acquainted by nature or by training with the relations and 
 the meanings of sounds? Upon such a man, all the time 
 and the care that these poets have expended in arranging 
 their words in another form than prose have been wasted. — 
 Essay on The Literary Artist and Elocution. 
 
 With all this preponderating devotion to the supposed 
 requirements of form, there appears to be, both in Pope 
 and Dry den, a marked absence of any desire to produce the 
 finer qualities of sound, like those of assonance, phonetic 
 syzygy, and gradation, which make poetry really musical. 
 With all their transpositions, they never succeeded in pro- 
 ducing the purely melodious effects of Tennyson and 
 Longfellow. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xiii. 
 
 POETRY, BASED ON COMPARISON. 
 
 Poetry results, . . . when the motive which previously has 
 influenced the thought indefinitely, and which therefore 
 could be represented appropriately in only indefinite or 
 inarticulate sounds, reaches the region of definite thought. 
 ... It seems to be a necessary condition of definite thought, 
 that there should be, in the first place, conceptions already 
 in the mind, and, in the second place, a motive owing to 
 the influence of which they are revealed to consciousness. 
 Ordinarily a man conceives of both the conceptions and the 
 motive as one. He does so, however, according to the same 
 principle that leads him, when he sees ice moving in the river, 
 to say that the water is moving. The two things, ice and 
 water, are different. It is the mind that unites them. At 
 the same time, thought is conscious, all the while, that they 
 are two things, and not one. The motive in poetry, as in 
 music, sweeps the emotions onward to instinctive action. 
 But in poetry, the ideas, caught up in the tide, clearly repeat, 
 or, as we may say, reinforce the motive; and that which 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS . 255 
 
 causes the mind to consider both motive and idea as one 
 thing and not two is the fact that, with, of course, some 
 contrasts, they compare together, and also the fact that 
 the mind is conscious that they do this. Conscious com- 
 parison, therefore, rather than the unconscious phases 
 of it and of association that lead to the developments of 
 music, lies at the basis of poetry. — Art in Theory, xviii. 
 
 POETRY, HOW DEVELOPED. 
 
 Similar facts are true of poetry. A man like an animal 
 could express his actual wants in a few different sighs, 
 cries, grunts, and hisses. But from these he develops, in 
 their various forms, the innumerable words and phrases 
 that render possible the nice distinctions of language. 
 These words and phrases are often freshly invented by 
 the poets, and they are almost always invented as a result 
 of what is recognized to be the poetic tendency latent in 
 all men. As for poems considered as wholes, their metres or 
 rhymes are never produced as immediate subjective utter- 
 ances, such as we hear in ordinary speech. They are always 
 the work of the imagination, bringing together the results 
 of experience and experiment, according to the method 
 termed composition. In other words, even aside from the 
 fact that they are usually written or printed, but neces- 
 sarily when considered in connection with this, they evi- 
 dently involve the construction of an external product. 
 Nor can we explain their existence at all, except by attribut- 
 ing them to the intense and unadulterated satisfaction which 
 the poet derives from elaborating them, not for ends of 
 material utility, but for effects of beauty that pertain only to 
 themselves. — Idem, viii. 
 
 POETRY, HOW ITS REPRESENTATION INFLUENCES THOUGHT. 
 
 Poetry, as we have found, is an art; and art does not 
 consist of thoughts, explanations, or arguments concerning 
 things, but of substituted realities representing them; and 
 there can be no legitimate re-presentation, except of what 
 may be supposed to be perceived. If, for instance, certain 
 persons are doing certain things, one will probably draw 
 some inferences from their actions with reference to their 
 motives, and he will have a right to tell his inferences — in 
 prose ; but not, as a rule, in poetry. In this, he must picture 
 what he has observed, and leave others, as free as he himself 
 has been, to infer what they choose. At the same time. 
 
356 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 in the degree in which he is an artist, his picture will be 
 of such a character as to impel others to draw from it the 
 same inference that he himself has drawn. — Poetry as a 
 Representative Art, xx. 
 
 POETRY, ITS LANGUAGE IN A SCIENTIFIC AGE. 
 
 As a language grows conventional and scientific, it loses 
 much of its imaginative and poetic force. When men have 
 arbitrary symbols to express precisely what they wish to say, 
 their fancies do not search for others to suggest what, at best 
 can but vaguely picture it. We hear them speak of engines 
 and of locomotives, not of ''horses breathing fire." . . . Amid 
 circumstances like these must poetry succumb? If not, in 
 what way can the poet overcome them? Certainly in one 
 way only — by recognizing his conditions, and making 
 the most of the material at his disposal. He must use a 
 special poetic diction. In doing this two things are 
 incumbent on him. The first is to choose from the mass 
 of language words that have poetic associations. All our 
 words convey definite meanings not only, but accompany- 
 ing suggestions ; and some of these are very unpoetic. . . . 
 But there is a second thing incumbent on the poet. . . . He 
 must choose from the mass of language words that embody 
 poetic comparisons, — choose them not only negatively, by 
 excluding terms too scientific or colloquial, which, with 
 material and mean associations, break the spell of the 
 ideal and spiritual; but positively, by going back in imagi- 
 nation to the view-point of the child, and (either because 
 arranging old words so as to reveal the pictures in them, 
 or because originating new expressions of his own) by sub- 
 stituting for the commonplace that which is worthy of an 
 art which should be aesthetic. — Idem, xvii. 
 
 POETRY, ITS LANGUAGE NOT NECESSARILY FIGURATIVE. 
 
 Direct pure representative poetry, as has been intimated, 
 pictures to the mind, without the use of figurative lan- 
 guage, a single transaction or series of transactions in such 
 a way as to influence the thoughts of him who hears the 
 poetry, precisely as they would have been influenced had he 
 himself perceived the transaction or series of transactions 
 of which the poetry treats. The works of Homer, as in 
 fact of all the classic writers, are filled with examples of this 
 kind of representation. — Poetry as a Representative Art, 
 XX. 
 
St. Isaac's, Petrograd 
 
 See pages 4, 9, 10, 12, 73, 81-85, 89, 91, 162, 223-225, 301, 316, 
 323-327, 385 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 257 
 
 POETRY, ITS LANGUAGE VS. PROSE. 
 
 Poetic form necessitates a peculiar selection and arrange- 
 ment of words and phrases. But if these violate the laws 
 of natural expression or of grammatical construction, as 
 exemplified in the language of prose, their meanings may 
 be obscured entirely, or, if not so, will, at least, be con- 
 veyed through forms that seem artificial. It was for 
 these reasons that Wordsworth argued that there should 
 be no difference between the language of poetry and of 
 prose. In his own practice he sometimes carried out his 
 theory only too faithfully; but a truth underlay it, which 
 always needs to be borne in mind. The problem in con- 
 nection with all versification is, how to arrange words. . . . 
 so as to produce. . . . rhythmical and musical effects, with- 
 out impairing, somewhat, the naturalness of the phrase- 
 ology. The departures from naturalness, in order to satisfy 
 the demands of sound, usually manifest themselves in 
 one of five different ways, viz: in the insertion, the trans- 
 position, the alteration, the omission, or the misuse of words. 
 — Idem, XIII. 
 
 When we get to the bottom of the subject, that which 
 distinguishes prose from poetry is that the latter influences 
 us through the use of imitation or through imaging. As 
 shown on pages 208 to 212 of "Poetrj^ as a Representative 
 Art," we can present the thoughts and feelings which an 
 appearance of nature suggests, in ordinary language, i. e., in 
 prose, if we choose. But if so, we seldom present them 
 artistically, or poetically. We do the latter only when we 
 repeat the methods of nature, and re-present that which na- 
 ture presents. Just as we re-present the natural inflections 
 of the voice in musical melody, the figures and scenes of 
 nature in painting and sculpture, so in poetry, we re-present 
 through descriptive or figurative language. In one sense it 
 is true, as the modern so-called Aristotelians tell us, that 
 the effects of art, even in poetry, do not depend upon the 
 subject. They depend upon the appeal which the subject 
 makes to the imagination, and this depends upon the ima- 
 ging, or upon what Aristotle terms the imitation. At times, 
 but only at times, the subject itself is such that necessarily, 
 the moment it is presented, the imagination thinks of a 
 picture. At other times this is not the case. When it is not, 
 the poet, through the use of imitative or imaging language. 
 
258 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER 'S CABINET 
 
 or, as we say, of figurative language, must make the different 
 parts of the subject seem picturesque. — Art in Theory, 
 Appendix iii. 
 
 POETRY, ITS PRACTICAL UTILITY. 
 
 This interpretation of the meaning of nature, natural 
 and human, by those who have learned to interpret it, 
 while striving to have it convey their own meanings, lies 
 at the basis of all the practical uses of poetry. Therefore 
 it is that its products bring with them an atmosphere 
 consoling and inspiring, both enlightening and expanding 
 the conceptions and experiences of the reader. Just as 
 each specific application of Christianity, — all its warnings, 
 consolations, and encouragements, which develop purity 
 within and righteousness without, in the individual, in 
 society, or in the state, spring from the one general concep- 
 tion of universal and divine love manifested in the 
 form of the Christ, so do all the specific applications of 
 poetry spring from the one general conception of universal 
 and divine truth manifested through the forms of material 
 and human nature. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xxviii. 
 
 POETRY vs. ELOCUTION. 
 
 Viewed in itself, poetry is an end, — a series of words 
 representing the comparative processes of imagination. 
 Viewed in connection with elocution, poetry is a means. If 
 a written product happen to suggest acting, this fact alone, 
 irrespective of its merit as poetry, may commend it to the 
 elocutionist. It follows therefore that the subject-matter of 
 each of the two arts must be judged by a different stand- 
 ard, — a fact which, if regarded, would save our critics of 
 poetry many a slip, and our orators many an hour use- 
 lessly employed in the vain attempt to produce an oratori- 
 cal effect through the medium of that which is distinctively 
 poetic. It is logic aimed to affect reason and will, rather 
 than analogy aimed to affect imagination and sentiment, 
 that renders the oration powerful. The poetic end is 
 important; but not in circumstances where the essential 
 matter is to influence reason and will. — The Representative 
 Significance 0} Fornix xxvi. 
 
 POETRY vs. LOGIC. 
 
 Poetry does not reveal truth to us in logic, but in light. — 
 Poetry as a Representative Art, xxiv. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 259 
 
 POETRY VS. MUSIC, GENESIS OF EACH. 
 
 When a man, or any living creature, gives vocal expres- 
 sion to moods that control him, there are two distinct forms 
 which this may assume, both of which, however, all creatures 
 cannot always produce. The sounds may be either sus- 
 tained or unsustained. A dog, for instance, howls, and also 
 barks; a cat purrs and also mews; a bird warbles and also 
 chirps; a man sings and also talks. If these forms be at all 
 representative, the sustained sounds must represent some- 
 thing sustained, and the others something not sustained. 
 As a rule, an internal mental process is continued or sus- 
 tained because it is *iot interrupted. As a rule, too, that 
 which interrupts is external to the thoughts and feelings 
 which constitute the factors of this process. Interrupt 
 the creature producing the sustained sounds, — go out at 
 night and speak to your howling dog, take the milk from a 
 purring cat, the nest from a warbHng bird, or the plaything 
 from a singing child, and at once you will hear sounds of the 
 other form, — barking, mewing, chirping, or scolding in words. 
 We may say, therefore, that the sustained form is mainly 
 subjective, or spontaneous, and that the unsustained form 
 is mainly relative or responsive. Birds and men instinctively 
 sing to meet demands that come from within; they in- 
 stinctively chirp or talk to meet those that come from 
 without. The singing sounds continue as long as their 
 producer wishes to have them; the chirping and talking 
 sounds are checked as soon as they have accomplished 
 their outside purpose, and are continued only by way of 
 reiteration or else of change, in order to suit the changing 
 effects that they are perceived to have upon the creatures 
 or persons toward whom they are directed. It is not 
 essential that the sustained, singing sounds should convey 
 any definite intelligence to another, because there is no 
 intrinsic necessity that he should understand them. But 
 the unsustained sounds must convey definite intelligence, 
 because this is their object. 
 
 These two conditions respectively correspond, as will be 
 observed, to those that underlie effects in music and in 
 poetry. It is to be shown, in the discussion which follows, 
 that there is a sense in which the former art as well as 
 the latter is representative; but it is important to notice 
 that the two arts are not representative of the same con- 
 ditions. Therefore they do not represent in the same 
 
26o AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 way nor to the same degree either mind or nature. Music 
 gives expression to certain classes of sustained and sub- 
 jective moods, joyous or sad, concerning which there is 
 no outside or objective reason for imparting any specific 
 or definite information. The moment intelHgence of a 
 particular mood needs to be communicated thus, as in 
 cases of outside emergency of an ordinary character, or of 
 those exciting one to extraordinary petulance or rage, then 
 the dog barks, the bird chirps, and the man, in order to 
 make himself distinctly understood, uses his throat, tongue, 
 and lips in the various ways that cause the distinct articu- 
 lation which characterizes words. 
 
 It is important to notice, too, that this difference dis- 
 tinguishable between the lowest and most elementary forms 
 of these two methods of vocal representation is the only one 
 that is fundamental. All the other distinctions that can 
 be made between sounds characterize alike thOvSe of song 
 and of speech. As will be shown in the following chapter, 
 sounds differ in time, jorce, pitch, and quality. Accord- 
 ing to the first, one sound may have more duration than 
 another. Artistically developed, in connection with force, 
 this difference leads to rhythm. But there is rhythm in 
 poetry as well as in music. According to the second, one 
 sound may be louder than another. But this kind of 
 emphasis is as common in conversation as in chanting. 
 According to the third, one sound may be higher in the 
 musical scale than another. Artistically developed, this 
 leads to tune. But the voice rises and falls in speaking as 
 well as in singing. According to the fourth, one sound 
 may be more sweet and resonant than another. But 
 the differences between pure, orotund, guttural, pectoral, 
 and aspirated tones, are as decided as are those between 
 the tones in different parts in singing and between the 
 characters of the sounds produced by different musical 
 instruments. 
 
 When we come to use the word sustained, however, we 
 can say that in music a tone is sustained in time, with a 
 degree of force, at one pitch, and with one kind of quality, 
 in a sense that is not true as applied to speaking. We 
 may use articulated words in a song, yet there is a radical 
 difference between singing them and talking them; and 
 so far as concerns merely musical effects, these can be 
 produced, as is often the case not only in instrumental but 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 261 
 
 even in vocal music, without any of the effects produced 
 by articulation. 
 
 It is possible to separate even more clearly the original 
 germ of musical representation from that of poetry. As 
 shown in Chapter XX. of "Art in Theory," the elementary 
 tendency mainly developed in music, is found in those 
 instinctive and always inarticulate ejaculations or more 
 prolonged utterances, as of fright or of pleasure, which are 
 natural to a man, and these utterances, when, intentionally 
 or artistically repeated for purposes of expression, come to 
 mean what they do in fulfilment of the principle of associ- 
 ation. The elementary tendency mainly developed in 
 poetry is found in those forms of articulation used after 
 expression ceases to be wholly instinctive and becomes re- 
 flective; and in these forms of articulation, as shown in Chap- 
 ter I. of " Poetry as a Representative Art," a man begins to 
 imitate what he hears and to make his utterances mean 
 what they do in fulfilment of the principle of comparison. 
 At the same time, as pointed out in the same place, associ- 
 ation and comparison are closely allied; and, even when they 
 are most different, expression is developed with completeness 
 in the degree only in which it manifests some traces of both. 
 
 Even speech, for instance, while meaning what it does 
 on account mainly of articulation, is, in part, also dependent, 
 precisely as is music, upon that which is not articulation 
 — but what we term intonation. A babe too young to 
 talk, a foreigner using a language unknown to us, or a 
 friend talking at such a distance that his words are indis- 
 tinguishable, can each, notwithstanding this disadvantage, 
 reveal to us something of his meaning. We can tell from 
 his tones, aside from his words, whether he be excited or 
 calm, elated or depressed, pleased or angered, earnest or 
 indifferent. The effects thus produced spring, evidently, 
 from a natural tendency which causes the movements or 
 directions — what we might term the general methods of 
 the voice — to correspond to those of the motives that 
 actuate one. 
 
 On account of this expressional tendency to fulfil, either 
 by way of association or of comparison, what may be termed 
 the principle of correspondence, the intonations of speech may 
 be said to be, in a true sense, representative. All of us 
 must be aware that an acquaintance can be recognized in 
 the dark largely because his conversation is characterized 
 
262 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 by similar ways, at certain definite intervals, of moving and 
 checking and pitching his utterances; in other words, be- 
 cause he has a certain rhythm and tune of his own. Make 
 one a public speaker or a reciter of stories, like the min- 
 strel of former ages, and these movements of the voice 
 will be made by him with more art and more regularity. 
 Hence the origin of rhythm, as well as of chanting, among 
 those story-tellers who were the first poets. Make the 
 rhythm a little more marked and regular and arranged in 
 clauses of the same length, on the principle of putting 
 like with like, and we have verse. Make the rhythm still 
 more marked, by the use of similar sounds at regular inter- 
 vals, and we have rhyme. Vary the rhythm to express 
 different ideas or classes of ideas, and we have the various 
 kinds of metre. Vary the rhythm still more, as well as 
 the upward and downward movements of the voice con- 
 stituting the tune or chant, and, in connection with this, 
 pass from unsustained to sustained tones, and we have a 
 musical melody. "We are justified in assuming," says 
 Helmholtz, in Part III., Chapter IX., of the "Sensations of 
 Tone," "that, historically, all music was developed from 
 song. Afterward the power of producing similar melodic 
 effects was attained by means of other instruments, which 
 had a quality of tone compounded in a manner resembling 
 that of the human voice." Of course, in connection with 
 the development of melody and the invention of musical 
 instruments came the arrangement of notes in musical 
 scales and the beginning of harmony; but these have to 
 do not with representation in music, but with the methods 
 of elaborating the form of representation. At present, it 
 is sufficient to notice that, when once we have a melody 
 sung in the notes of a scale, we have but to combine cer- 
 tain of these notes, that is, to sound do, mi, sol, not succes- 
 sively but simultaneously, and we have harmony. If, 
 now, we produce both melody and harmony on different 
 musical instruments, and, in connection with these, sing 
 without articulating words, as, in fact, most singers do, 
 we can yet produce intelligible music; or we can cease to 
 use our voices at all, and still dp the same. 
 
 Evidently, there is nothing to prevent the sounds as 
 thus developed from continuing to be representative. At 
 the same time, as has been intimated, there is no reason 
 why they should be representative in a way as unmistak- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 263 
 
 ably distinct and definite as we find in language; and they 
 are not so. Berlioz, we are told, used to amuse himself 
 by singing tunes with Italian words, and waiting till his 
 hearers had demonstrated how successfully the character 
 of the Italian verse had inspired the composer, when he 
 would inform them that the music was from a symphony 
 of Beethoven. We must all have noticed, too, how scores 
 of different sets of words, describing or expressing by no 
 means the same experiences or conceptions, may often, 
 with equal appropriateness, be sung to the same melody. 
 But, while this is so, it is worthy of note that in certain 
 general features, especially in expressing certain phases of 
 feeling, all these verses must be alike. They must all, for 
 instance, be either joyous or sad, or represent either elation 
 or depression. With this general and mainly emotive 
 method of representation, music must be content. — Rhythm 
 and Harmony in Poetry and Music: Music as a Representa- 
 tive Art, I. 
 
 POETRY vs. PAINTING AND OTHER ART-FORMS {see FORM, 
 STUDY of). 
 
 Poetry bears the same relation to the arts of sound that 
 painting and sculpture bear to those of sight. All three 
 are largely imitative. Poetry reproduces in an artistic 
 guise what might be heard in nature, if a man were telling 
 a story, or if several men were conversing. Painting and 
 sculpture reproduce in an artistic guise what might be seen 
 in nature. For this reason it is possible to be interested, 
 though not artistically interested, in the products of each 
 of these arts, on account merely of that which they portray, 
 irrespective of the style or form in which they portray it. 
 But the converse is true with reference to music and archi- 
 tecture. These arts are only slightly imitative, and if 
 we be interested in them at all, it is owing almost entirely 
 to their style or form. But we must not make the mis- 
 take of inferring from this fact that style or form is unim- 
 portant in the former arts; in other words, that the laws 
 of tone as tone must not be fulfilled in poetry, or of color 
 as color in painting. It is chiefly with reference to poetry 
 that this mistake is likely to be made. Admirers of Whit- 
 man might possibly — were they logical, which, fortunately, 
 they are not — be ready to deny that the laws of sound apply 
 to poetry in the same sense as to music. And yet they are 
 
264 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 as imperative in the one art as in the other, though, of 
 course, in a different degree and way. — Rhythm and Har- 
 mony in Poetry and Music, vii. 
 
 POPULARITY AS A TEST OF ART. 
 
 It is because no soul can sympathize with a conception 
 higher than its own best possibiHties that popular art, as a 
 rule, embodies views of life which are common to all men, 
 rather than peculiar to a few. It is because love is univer- 
 sal, that love-stories are the most universally popular. At 
 the same time, of course, popularity is not a sufficient 
 criterion by which to judge of art — any more than of any- 
 thing else. The value of the popularity depends upon its 
 quality, and, in art, which involves an appeal to intelligence 
 and experience, it depends upon the quality of these. — The 
 Representative Significance of Form, xiv. 
 
 PORTRAIT, WHEN RANKING HIGHEST. 
 
 The portrait and the bust, which reproduce the forms of 
 nature most perfectly, are not necessarily entitled to the 
 highest rank ; and when they are entitled to it, like the works 
 of Titian or Velasquez, they rank thus not merely on account 
 of the accuracy of their imitation, but also because, in 
 addition to this, they have the quality to which Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds referred when he snapped his fingers, saying of a 
 work, "It wants that.'' No matter, at present, what this 
 quality is. . . . Just now, it is enough for us to recognize 
 that the value of a portrait or a bust does not depend 
 alone upon its accuracy as a copy. Nor, even were this the 
 case, could ** natural," as the term is used, be applied to it 
 with any more propriety than to a picture of the Madonna, 
 whom Raphael never saw; or to a landscape of scenes in 
 Greece which Rottmann never beheld; or to a statue of the 
 struggles of a Laocoon, which existed only in the brain of a 
 Virgil. — Idem, xii. 
 
 PORTRAITS, HOW MADE IDEAL. 
 
 It may be said that when any portrait is to be painted, 
 that of which the great artist thinks is not merely outline 
 and color, but the thoughts and emotions which outline 
 and color, in the particular face before him, can be made to 
 suggest. He asks what is the character, and what is the 
 influence upon the mind, of the particular character that is 
 to be portrayed. Take a boy. If he be athletic in his 
 tendencies, his character may be best brought out by stand- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 265 
 
 ing him up in a lawn-tennis suit with a racket in his hand : if 
 studious, by sitting him down with a book. In both cases, 
 the pose can be made to tell its own story. In the latter case, 
 if he be gazing up from his book with a dreamy, far-away 
 look in his eyes, the picture, though a portrait, may be 
 made to have all the interest that might attach to an 
 idealization named "The Young Newton," or "The 
 Young Scott"; and, no matter whose boy it may be, he 
 will seem interesting to every one. What makes any 
 portrait the opposite, is less the fact that the person por- 
 trayed is uninteresting, than the fact that the artist has 
 not had enough penetration to discover what the traits 
 are that are interesting, uniformly and universally; or 
 the ingenuity to extract them from their lurking-places 
 and reveal and emphasize them. — Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative ArtSy xiv. 
 
 PORTRAITURE, IDEAL. 
 
 To go back to portraits. By the exercise of a little 
 brain-work it is always possible, in picturing a person, to 
 introduce something which, without verbal interpretation, 
 will represent, and enable the mind to recognize, his char- 
 acter. This causes what is termed ideal portraiture. — Idem, 
 
 PRACTICAL AIM IN ART-STUDY {see STANDARDS). 
 
 In any study of art, however, it must always be borne 
 in mind that to reach a philosophical result is not the sole 
 or the chief aim. This aim is practical ; and it was a practi- 
 cal aim that first suggested this series of volumes. At a 
 time when their writer was an author and a teacher, looking 
 for guidance and finding none, most of the criticism of the 
 day, whether of poetry, painting, or architecture, revealed 
 an absence of any standards of judgment, if not a disbelief 
 in the possibility of their existence. Indeed, some of the 
 foremost leaders in criticism took the ground that there are 
 no such standards, an opinion virtually maintained, despite 
 all protests to the contrary, in what are, perhaps, the fresh- 
 est and most suggestive of the books on aesthetics that have 
 been produced even very lately. — Proportion and Harmony 
 of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 PRACTICE AND ART-PRODUCTS {see also DRILL, INSPIRED, and 
 SKILL AND REVISION). 
 
 It is true, of course, that no amount of practice can enable 
 some to become artists, and that, in exceptional cases or 
 
266 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 upon extraordinary occasions, some may produce genuine 
 works of art who have practised little; but, as a rule, practice 
 is indispensable if one wish to attain the characteristics 
 supposed to be possessed habitually by the great artists. — 
 The Representative Significance of Form, xiii. 
 
 PRACTICE AND PROFICIENCY. 
 
 In all education, as in musical, in which everyone recog- 
 nizes the fact, later proficiency is the result of early practice 
 and patience. The expert in using all the elements of sound 
 began his familiarity with them by being introduced to 
 them, one by one, and over and over again, because he 
 could not elsewise remember them; and the thrill that we 
 get when he masters his forces is the direct result of the drill 
 that he got from those who mastered him when a boy. — 
 Essay on Fundamentals in Education. 
 
 PRACTICE, ITS EFFECTS {see also INSPIRED, THE, and skill). 
 Exactly what was it that practice had thus done for 
 Beethoven ? ... It had given his fingers muscular flexi- 
 bility, enabling them to sound upon an instrument what- 
 ever notes a composition demanded. But besides this, 
 practice had given the brain controlling his fingers what also 
 we might term flexibility; and it had given the mind, too, 
 lodged in his brain, a mental habit of using the right fingers 
 in the right places, and all the fingers in the right orders 
 of succession. Beyond this, it had enabled his mind to 
 comprehend in a single glance large groups of notes on a 
 printed staff and, no matter how numerous and complex, to 
 send his knowledge of them through the nerves, and transfer 
 them to sound with precision and yet with the rapidity of 
 lightning. Moreover, all this, which, when he began, had 
 involved the slow and painful process of consciously think- 
 ing of each note on a printed staff, and of each corresponding 
 key on an instrument, practice had enabled him to do at 
 last unconsciously at the same time that all his conscious 
 powers were employed in giving expression to the general 
 effect. — The Representative Significance of Form, xiii. 
 
 PRACTICE OF ELEMENTS, ESSENTIAL TO PERFECTION. 
 
 My theory is, that, in the degree in which any essential 
 characteristic of delivery is defective, there is not a move- 
 ment of the elbow, wrist, or fingers, of the lungs, larynx, 
 palate, or tongue, which can be freed from defect except as 
 a result of automatic action acquired through a slow and 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 267 
 
 laborious practice of exercises, every feature of which has 
 been accurately described by the instructor and put into 
 execution by the pupil; for no matter how rapid or how 
 slight a gesture or a tone may be, the eye or the ear will be 
 sure to detect and feel any defect whatever in its expres- 
 sional quality. — Essay on The Function of Technique, 
 
 PRINCIPALITY IN ART. 
 
 In hearing the song of a bird or a man, we may observe 
 chiefly the time filled by the different tones or their move- 
 ments up and down the scale; in looking at a tree we may 
 observe chiefly the outlines formed by its leaves, branches, 
 or general contour, or by its color; but whatever we may 
 observe, it seems to be a law of the mind that usually 
 only one of the many features perceived attracts special 
 attention. The fact that this is so, has much to do with 
 causing the song or tree — notwithstanding the different 
 effects of its component parts — to appear to be one 
 thing and not many. That which attracts special atten- 
 tion in these cases — whatever it may be — is that which 
 seems to the observer to have principality^. Everything 
 else, of course, appears subordinate,^ while the degree in 
 which all the factors together — whether principal or sub- 
 ordinate — blend so as to suggest the completeness or 
 equilibrium of the whole gives the measure of the com- 
 plement or balance^. — The Genesis of Art-Form, III. 
 
 PROGRESS, AS REPRESENTED IN ART. 
 
 It is almost impossible to conceive of any painting or 
 statue, however small, in which the progress^ of the idea in 
 its advance to take possession of the whole body of the 
 subject or subjects, might not be represented. In a human 
 figure, the expression of the face may be in advance of that 
 of the arms or hands, the expressions of these in advance of 
 that of the lower limbs, while at the same time the adjust- 
 ments of the clothing may give scarcely any indications of 
 that which has begun to influence the body underneath it. — 
 Ideniy XVII. 
 
 PROGRESS, REPRESENTED IN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Nor is it less possible to represent the effects of progress^ 
 in buildings. In many of the English cathedrals the whole 
 development of Gothic architecture from the Norman, 
 through the pointed, decorated, and perpendicular, can be 
 
 'See page 89 of "An Art-Philosopher's Cabinet." 
 
268 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 traced literally in the different forms used in different parts. 
 But progress in such a literal sense is not essential, nor is it 
 always consistent with unity ^. When, according to the 
 method of gradation^ described a moment ago, one form of 
 arch is used above the lower openings, and another sharper 
 development of the same over higher openings, and another 
 still sharper over the highest, we have a representation of 
 progress of a more desirable kind. So, too, we have the 
 same in the interior of a cathedral, when the arches above 
 seern to grow like limbs of trees out of the shafts below 
 them, and when the chancel beyond the nave, to which so 
 many lines of the walls and ceiling point, seems, with its 
 finer elaboration of the resources of outline and its grander 
 wealth of color in window and altar, to burst upon the 
 vision like a flower, for which all the rest has furnished only 
 a splendid preparation for unfoldment. — Idem, xvii. 
 
 PROPORTION (see also references to the subject under archi- 
 tecture, PERSPECTIVE, and rhythm). 
 
 The term proportion, when used in a non-technical sense, 
 signifies frequently little more than measurement. When 
 we say that a house has the proportions of a palace, or a 
 growing boy the proportions of a man, we mean merely 
 that the one is as large as the other, or has the same 
 general measurements. In addition to this, however, 
 there is often connected with the term, when carefully 
 used, a conception of a comparison of measurements. 
 When we say of a man that his feet are out of proportion, or 
 of a copy of a Greek temple, that its pediment is out of 
 proportion, we are probably recalling a normally developed 
 man or an ancient Greek temple. If so, we mean that, in 
 the specimen before us, the measurements of the parts 
 mentioned are not the same as in the specimen of which we 
 are thinking. 
 
 There may be two reasons why these measurements are 
 not the same: one reason, because they are absolutely 
 larger or smaller than in this specimen; the other reason, 
 because they are relatively so, a hand or a limb being said 
 to be in proportion because its measurements, whether 
 large or small, bear the same relation to the parts or to 
 the whole of a body that they do in the typical man which 
 is supposed to be the artist's model. 
 
 »See page 89 of "An Art-Philosopher's Cabinet." 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 269 
 
 But proportion has still another meaning. From this, 
 any conception of imitation, whether or not suggested by 
 any particular model, is absent; and a part is said to be in 
 proportion because of the relationship which its measure- 
 ments sustain to the measurements of other parts or to 
 the whole of a product. This seems to be the meaning 
 when we speak of the proportions of the human figure, 
 irrespective of any references to attempts to copy any par- 
 ticular model; and it certainly is the meaning when we 
 speak of the proportions of a building in a style such as 
 has never before had existence, ... in this sense, propor- 
 tion includes the ideas, both of ratios or relationships, as 
 in 1:2, and also of Hkeness or equality in ratios, as in 1:2:: 
 3 : 6. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, 11. 
 
 The view expressed in Gwilt's "Encyclopedia of Archi- 
 tecture, " and still quite prevalent, to the effect that pro- 
 portion is "but a synonym for fitness," is entirely ignored. 
 This is not because of any undervaluation of the aesthetic 
 importance of fitness, but because it is recognized that this 
 latter characterizes many other artistic arrangements of 
 form, as those of rhythm, tune, and color; and because it is 
 recognized also that no amount of mere fitness could cause, 
 or even suggest, that which is generally meant not only by 
 artists but by people in general when they speak of pro- 
 portion. When using this term in any strict or technical 
 sense they almost invariably refer to an effect of measure- 
 ments indicating a certain mathematical relationship 
 between the parts of a product as compared with one 
 another and with the whole. — Ideniy Preface. 
 
 Artistic proportion is based in this volume, as all acknow- 
 ledge rhythm to be, upon the principle of comparison. It 
 is held that, fundamentally, measurements go together 
 because they appear to be exactly alike, that is, as 1:1; 
 and that the mind accepts the ratios of certain small num- 
 bers that are not alike, like i : 2 or 2 : 3, because it is able to 
 recognize in the first that which corresponds to I : I + 1 , and 
 in the second that which corresponds to i-f-i:i + i + i. — 
 Idem, Preface. 
 
 If, however, the relationship be not that of 1:1, the next 
 easiest to recognize is that of i : 2. . . . Nor is it difficult to 
 recognize the relationship of i : 3, as between the second pair 
 of lines in this figure, or of 2 : 3, as between the third pair. 
 
270 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET ' 
 
 But it is evident that as the values of the numbers represent- 
 ing the ratios increase, these become less recognizable; as, 
 for instance, when they are as 4:5 or as 5:7, as between, 
 respectively, the fourth and fifth pairs of lines in this Fig. 
 16. When, at last, we get to a relationship that can be 
 expressed only by large numbers like 10:11, or 15:16, the 
 mind is no longer able to recognize even its existence. — 
 Idem, IV. 
 
 What has been said will show us a good reason, too, 
 why, as affirmed by W. W. Lloyd in his ''Memoir on the 
 Systems of Proportion," published with Cockerill's ** Tem- 
 ples of ^gina and Bassse," p. 64, "the Greek architects 
 attached great value to simple ratios of low natural num- 
 bers. " Of course, the simpler the ratio, and lower the 
 number, the more easily could each be recognized. — Idem, 
 II. 
 
 Notice, again, that proportion, as it is thus attributed to 
 measurements that are compared, is merely a statement of 
 a fact; nor is it essential that the mind, before stating this 
 fact, should recognize what the ratio is, only that it has 
 existence. The same principle applies here as in rhythm. 
 To experience the effects of this, we do not need to be 
 able to tell what the metre is — whether long or short, 
 iambic or trochaic — only that there is a metre. But while 
 this is true, the metre must be capable of being analyzed; 
 and we must feel that it is so, although, perhaps, we our- 
 selves do not actually go through with the analytic process. 
 Idem, II. 
 
 The mind takes satisfaction not in the ratio per se, but 
 in that which the ratio enables it to recognize, which is that, 
 in fulfilment of the fundamental art-method, measurements 
 have been put together which are alike as to their parts. . . . 
 This is not the explanation usually given for effects of 
 proportion. But it is the explanation most consistent 
 with that usually given for effects of rhythm; it is the 
 explanation most consistent with all the methods of art as 
 unfolded in " The Genesis of Art-Form" (see also chart 
 on page 89 of the present volume) ; and, finally, it is the 
 explanation which can render most easy and simple the 
 practical application of the principle to all possible visible 
 efiEects. — Idem, viii. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 271 
 
 As rhythm starts by putting together similar small parts 
 such as feet and lines, and produces the general effect of the 
 whole as a result of the combined effects of these parts, so 
 does artistic proportion. For instance, the height of the 
 front of the Parthenon is to its breadth as 9: 14. But we 
 need not consider the architect as aiming primarily at this 
 proportion ; or that it is any more than a secondary, though, 
 of course, a necessary result of the relations, the one to the 
 other, of the different separate measurements put together 
 in order to form the whole. — Idem, Preface. 
 
 PROPORTION AND RHYTHM NATURAL TO MAN. 
 
 There is no primitive kind of ornamentation, no matter 
 how barbarous the race originating it, of which one char- 
 acteristic, perhaps the most marked, is not an exact division 
 or subdivision of spaces, the mind, apparently, deriving the 
 same sort of satisfaction from rude lines of paint and 
 scratchings upon stone, made at proportional distances from 
 one another, that it does from the rhythmical sounds 
 drummed with feet, hands, or sticks to accompany the song 
 and dance of the savage. — Idem, 11. 
 
 An appreciation of rhythm is usually supposed to furnish 
 the earliest evidence of aesthetic capability on the part of 
 either a child or a savage. In fact, almost the only form of 
 musical harmony over large sections of the earth to-day 
 continues still to be merely a rude development of rhythm. 
 But what is rhythm ? A result of making, by series of noises 
 or strokes, certain like divisions of time — small divisions, 
 and exact multiples of them in large divisions. But the 
 moment that the smaller become so numerous that the fact 
 that they exactly go into the larger divisions is no longer 
 perceptible — as often, when we hear more even than eight 
 notes in a musical measure, or more even than three syllables 
 in a poetic foot, — the effect ceases to be rhythmical. A 
 like fact is true of proportion. Owing to the very great 
 possibilities and complications of outlinings, as in squares, 
 angles, and curves, its laws are intricate and difficult to 
 apply; but, as will be shown in the volume of this series 
 entitled ** Proportion and Harmony in Painting, Sculptiu'e, 
 and Architecture," the harmonic effects of proportion all 
 result, in the last analysis, from exact divisions and sub- 
 divisions of space in every way analogous to the methods 
 
272 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 underlying the effects of rhythm in time. — Art in Theory ^ 
 
 XII. 
 
 PROPORTION AND RHYTHM RECOGNIZED BY CONSCIOUS 
 MEASUREMENT. 
 
 The effect of proportion is attributed in this volume to 
 the mind's conscious as distinguished from unconscious 
 measurements. This distinction is the logical result 
 of a conception of an essential correspondence between 
 proportion and rhythm. In the latter the mind is always 
 consciously able to count, if it choose, the notes, syllables, 
 feet, bars, lines, phrases — in other words the measures or 
 measurements — which cause the effect. This is the same as 
 to say that proportion in the arts of sight is not, as has been 
 almost universally supposed (see Chapter III.), the analogue 
 of harmony in the arts of sound. Harmony is produced in 
 these arts whenever the number of vibrations per second 
 determining the pitch of one tone sustains a certain ratio to 
 the number of vibrations per second determining the pitch 
 of another tone. But only the investigations of science 
 have been able to discover that this is the reason for the 
 effect. The mind cannot count the vibrations. It is not 
 conscious of them; but only of an agreeable thrill or glow 
 experienced when different rates of vibration sustain to one 
 another the required harmonic ratio. Now if we go upon 
 the supposition that the measurements determining the 
 effects of proportion are ascertained just as are those deter- 
 mining the effects of harmony, it is evident that we must 
 suppose ourselves dealing with factors of which the mind is 
 unconscious; and must remain ignorant until science has 
 come into possession of certain data not yet discovered. Is 
 it any wonder that those accepting this supposition who 
 have tried to explain the effects, have either held that 
 they cannot be explained at all, or have made attempts 
 at explanation which may be said in a general way to 
 have failed to prove convincing? Is it any wonder that, 
 even when acknowledging that the Greeks once had a 
 knowledge of the subject, very many in our own times, 
 after seeking for this knowledge in wrong directions, have 
 conceived of the subject as hidden in almost impenetrable 
 mystery, — as involving principles which it is well-nigh 
 useless for present artists to attempt either to understand 
 or to apply? — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, 
 Preface. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 273 
 
 proportion dependent on apparent measurements 
 
 {see general and distant vs. specific and near 
 
 effects). 
 
 This effect of proportion thus interpreted is further 
 
 limited in this book by being ascribed to measurements 
 
 that are apparent as distinguished from actual. It is 
 
 shown that we judge of the proportions of the parts of a 
 
 body or of a building when viewing each from a distance, not 
 
 when examining it near at hand. — Idem, Preface. 
 
 An apparent measurement necessitates, at times, not 
 only a different result from an actual measurement, but also 
 a different conception of what should be measured. As an 
 instance of a different result, consider how the leg between 
 the heel and the place where it separates from the body is 
 apparently divided at the knee into two equal parts. This 
 is not a result of having the half below the knee of the same 
 length as the half above it. Being slimmer, the lower half 
 would appear longer, were it not in reality slightly shorter. 
 Again, as an instance of a different conception, consider 
 the measurement of the ankle. Ordinarily, we should 
 suppose this to be a dimension determined by its circum- 
 ference. But, when considering effects of appearances, it 
 is not the circumference that concerns us, but the appar- 
 ent distance from one side of the ankle to its other side, 
 as it is seen from a single point of view. — Idem, viii. 
 
 When a man with a yardstick is measuring, close at hand, 
 the parts of the Parthenon, then, according to the gener- 
 ally accepted representation, he is studying proportion. 
 But he is really doing nothing of the sort. He is studying 
 proportion, when he is standing at a distance from the 
 building and noticing the parts of it, which, from that dis- 
 tance, appear to fulfil the requirements of those comparative 
 measurements which proportion necessitates. When he is 
 close against the building with his yardstick, he is more 
 apt to be learning the differences between measurements 
 as they are, and as, from a distance, they appear to be, the 
 consideration of which differences and the methods of 
 obviating them furnish the subject-matter not of proportion 
 but of perspective. In the case of the Greeks, too, as we 
 shall find, the principles of the latter were applied in order 
 to produce distant appearances of proportion not only, but 
 also of height, breadth, straightness, parallelism, and other 
 
 x8 
 
274 ^^ ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 effects, which, in addition to those of proportion, were 
 deemed desirable. As said in the preceding chapter, a chief 
 reason why the requirements of proportion are supposed 
 to be involved in impenetrable mystery, and why, therefore, 
 the neglect of them in our own day is supposed to be excus- 
 able, is traceable to this confounding of these two entirely 
 different subjects of inquiry. — Idem, iv. 
 
 As the principles of proportion have reference to appear- 
 ances and to these alone, they cannot be fulfilled in a satis- 
 factory way without regard to circumstances. A number 
 of straight lines enclosed within a space, for instance, in- 
 crease the apparent length of that space in the direction in 
 which they point or incline. Any other spaces containing 
 no such lines, yet intended to appear of equal length with 
 it, ought really, therefore, to be a little longer. Again, if 
 when we are looking at a building a projecting cornice hide 
 part of a wall, window, pediment, or roof that is above the 
 cornice, so that this upper part appears too short or too low 
 to be in good proportion, then, as we shall find was the case 
 in the Parthenon, it must be made longer or higher, no 
 matter what its real measurement may be. The end to be 
 attained is not factors with like or related measurements, 
 but factors that appear to have these. — Idem, ix. 
 
 Whether applied to exteriors or interiors, the important 
 consideration is that there should be some apparent relation- 
 ship between the length, height, and breadth. If we 
 perceive that there is such a relationship, our minds are 
 satisfied. If we fail to perceive it, they are confused; the 
 effects are distracting and disquieting. As wAl presently 
 be shown, the use, on exteriors, of window-caps, string- 
 courses, cornices, pilasters, pillars, and also of some of these, 
 as well as of color and of upholstery in interiors, may some- 
 times counteract a confusing tendency. But sometimes, 
 too, it cannot; and when needing to suggest relationships 
 that do not really exist, it can never do so except by ap- 
 parently shortening or lengthening actual dimensions. — 
 Idem, IX. 
 
 It is well-nigh impossible to distinguish such effects as 
 are attributable to the measurements, from such as are 
 attributable to the outlines that are measured. For 
 instance when one says that the angles described by the 
 coverings over the gable-windows, turrets, and different 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 275 
 
 parts of the roof in Fig. 2^, page 51, are not in proportion, 
 he necessarily refers to appearances produced both by 
 measurements and by shapes. In the mind of the observer, 
 therefore, the two different classes of efEects are often 
 confounded.— /i^m, ix. 
 
 PROPORTION DEPENDENT ON APPEARANCES. 
 
 A very convincing proof of this may be obtained from the 
 facade of St. Sulpice, Paris. Has any one ever looked at 
 this church without finding himself involuntarily asking 
 why it is that its proportions seem so unsatisfactory? And 
 yet it is not because the measurements, as applied to the 
 building as a whole, violate any of the principles of propor- 
 tion. The extreme width of each tower is to the width of 
 the space between the towers exactly as 1:2. Could any 
 scheme of ratios be more simple? Why, then, does it not 
 appear so ? Why, but because of the five divisions made by 
 the pillars in the space between the towers? How can the 
 mind recognize that each tower's width is to the space as 
 1:2, or, what is the same thing, as 2:4, when it sees five 
 instead of four divisions in this space? It cannot do so, 
 or, at least, not without at first being confused. Were there 
 a pediment above the cornice over the nave, the apex of 
 this would divide the space there into two equal parts; or 
 were the central door of the nave made more prominent 
 than the two doors each side of it, then the present unfortu- 
 nate effect would be prevented. But if such changes cannot 
 be made, the mind would be better satisfied, in that it 
 would judge the proportions to be more correct, even on a 
 supposition that they were 2 : 4, in case there were between 
 the towers only four divisions of the width of the present 
 ones, making the proportions, in fact, less correct. — Idem, ix. 
 
 PROPORTION, GREEK, MISUNDERSTOOD. 
 
 There were many of the dimensions which the modem 
 Hellenist would follow slavishly, which the Greeks used on 
 account not of what they were, but of what they appeared to 
 be. Nor, even admitting that the proportions were used 
 on account of what they were, is it certain that the parts of 
 the buildings which modern students suppose these pro- 
 portions to determine are the parts which the Greeks 
 intended them to determine. When, for example, the 
 height of a temple, pediment included, is to its breadth 
 as 7: 12, or 9: 14, is this ratio the cause of these dimensions, 
 
276 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 or only an incidental and, therefore, almost accidental 
 result of arrangements for which the cause is to be sought 
 elsewhere, — for instance, in a desire to make the entabla- 
 ture and pediment appear of the same height, and both 
 together to appear to sustain a certain ratio to the columnar 
 space below them? — Idem, xi. 
 
 PROPORTION IN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Architecture, like music, deals with forms that to only 
 a limited extent can be said to result from an imitation of 
 nature. In some regards, this fact gives the builder greater 
 freedom for invention than is possible in painting and 
 sculpture. He is not expected to accept forms as he finds 
 them. Like the musician, who is at liberty to shorten and 
 lengthen sounds so as to make them rhythmical, he is at 
 liberty to shorten and lengthen shapes so as to make them 
 proportional. But this fact places him, in some regards, 
 under peculiar restraints. If the effects of the proportion 
 produced by him must depend upon his own invention, it is 
 particularly necessary for him to understand what the right 
 proportions should be. A painter not knowing this may 
 succeed because he may be able to copy accurately the 
 proportions of objects that form his models. But the archi- 
 tect, barring the instances, necessarily limited, in which 
 he may exactly imitate the buildings of others, must design 
 his own forms. In such circumstances, so far as beauty 
 depends on proportion, if ignorant of its requirements, 
 he will fail as certainly as a musician attempting to compose 
 a march, without knowing how to produce rhythm. — Idem, 
 
 IX. 
 
 PROPORTION IN ARCHITECTURE, THE RESULT OF EXPERI- 
 MENTING. 
 
 The Parthenon was not sketched in its completed form 
 upon paper, and then let out to some contractor to be 
 erected in so many months. It took, as some say, ten years, 
 and, as others say, sixteen years to complete it ; and most of 
 the marble in it — each column, for instance, with its capital 
 — is said to have been shaped after being lifted to its 
 place. We know that some of the Gothic cathedrals were 
 almost entirely pulled down and rebuilt, because their 
 appearance was not satisfactory. Why should it not have 
 been the same with the Greek temples? In the age in 
 which they were constructed other artists believed — why 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 277 
 
 should not the architect? — that a man should study upon 
 a product, if he intended to have it remain a model for 
 all the future. It is natural to suppose that the structural 
 arrangements intended to counteract optical defects, or to 
 produce optical illusions, were largely the results of the 
 individual experiments of individual builders. If they 
 were not so, why were they invariably different in different 
 buildings? But if they were so, and if, therefore, it be 
 justifiable to compare the methods of arranging the out- 
 lines of these buildings to the methods of arranging outlines 
 according to the laws of perspective in painting, then why is 
 not the general principle which these ancient architects 
 endeavored to fulfil of more practical importance than any 
 particular manner in which, in any particular case, they 
 fulfilled it? More than this, why might not the architects 
 of our own time, by applying, each for himself, as a result 
 of his individual experiments, the same general principle, 
 produce approximately successful results? But these they 
 certainly cannot produce (for reasons stated on page 26) 
 until they get out of their heads the conception that the 
 measurements in the ancient buildings are merely represen- 
 tative — in some mysterious way not possible to fathom — 
 of ratios related to one another as are those of pitch in 
 music. As applied to this case, at least, we have an illustra- 
 tion of how utterly destructive of true practice in art is a 
 false theory. — Idem, xiv. 
 
 PROPORTION IN ARTISTIC PAINTING OF NATURAL SCENERY. 
 
 Natural speech is not always rhythmical, at least not in 
 that higher sense in which it is also metrical. Yet a drama- 
 tic poet, in his artistic representation of speech, may make it 
 so. In the same way, why may not a painter or sculptor, 
 whether or not a form or collection of forms manifest pro- 
 portion in nature, make it do so in his artistic treatment? 
 The main requisite of proportion, as we have found, is to 
 have some apparently like standard of measurement into 
 which certain parts or sets of parts in an object of sight are 
 divided; and there are innumerable methods, not involving 
 any lack of exactness in imitation, through which this 
 result may be attained. Take a mountain scene. A 
 selection of one point of view only a hundred feet away 
 from another may entirely change the suggestion of like 
 divisions afforded by the lines of distant and nearer ridges, 
 
278 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 of snow or flora of different characters, or of the borders 
 of lakes or rivers. — Idem, vi. 
 
 The painting accurately represents nature, and nature 
 deprived of none of its variety. But if the artistic repre- 
 sentation did not fulfil the requirements of proportion, it 
 might be no more entitled to be considered a work of art 
 than would be a poem, if devoid of rhythm. — Idem. 
 
 PROPORTION IN HUMAN FORMS, AND CLOTHING. 
 
 To speak of the originator of styles of clothing, it is 
 sometimes supposed that these latter need fulfil no aesthetic 
 principles, — that men will think beautiful any style to 
 which they have become accustomed. But they will not 
 think it beautiful — whatever word they may use in order to 
 express their thought of it; at best, they will merely think 
 it fitting, because it is conventional; and for the same 
 reason, too, they may think any other style inappropriate. 
 But in some way, which possibly they cannot explain, 
 perhaps not even recognize, life for them will be deprived 
 of certain legitimate aesthetic influences, the presence of 
 which might enrich their experience. This statement 
 applies not only to the use of form and color, but also of 
 proportion. How easy it would be to cause the cut of 
 the garments to reveal the four, five, six, or eight parts 
 of equal lengths into which the height of the well propor- 
 tioned body is divisible! A line below the knee, whether 
 of skirt or breeches; a line at the middle, whether of girdle 
 or waistcoat; a line in the centre of the breast, whether 
 of bodice or vest, together with other lines, always divide 
 the figure satisfactorily. — Proportion and Harmony of Line 
 and Color, vi. 
 
 PROPORTION IN HUMAN FORMS, AS DETERMINED BY REAL OR 
 IMAGINED LINES. 
 
 When we come to consider the human body it might be 
 supposed that the influence of such lines as are drawn 
 through it or through parts of it, might not be felt because 
 they are not actually present. Nevertheless, because 
 they are ideally present, they have some influence. If, 
 for instance, a person be facing us, it is almost impossible 
 not to suppose an imaginary vertical straight line drawn 
 from the middle of his forehead to the middle of his chin, 
 and if we find this line passing through the middle of his 
 nose, we obtain an impression of regularity which, so far as 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 279 
 
 concerns it alone, is an aid to the agreeableness and conse- 
 quent beauty of the effect; but in the degree in which the 
 middle of the nose is out of this vertical line, not only- 
 irregularity but ugliness is suggested. A similar tendency of 
 thought causes us to suppose other imaginary vertical 
 straight lines, drawn, at equal distances from this central 
 line; and from them we may gain an impression of relative 
 regularity by noticing to what extent the lines pass through 
 corresponding sides of the face. Besides this, we are 
 prompted to suppose horizontal lines drawn, across the 
 forehead, eyes, and mouth; and from these lines, too, we 
 form judgments with reference to the degrees of regularity. 
 If the hair be farther down on one side of the forehead than 
 on the other, or if the arch of the eyebrows be not sym- 
 metrically rounded, or if the sides of the mouth incline down- 
 ward or upward, or a lip be larger on one side than on the 
 other, we notice the fact. Of course we do this, only so 
 far as we compare the result with that of an imaginary 
 straight line drawn through the feature. The same is 
 true, too, with reference to lines dividing other parts of the 
 body. If one part of an eye or ear or if a neck, or hand, or 
 trunk, or leg, be, relatively to other features of the frame, 
 too long, or too short, we perceive the defect almost immedi- 
 ately; but we can only do it as a result of ideally drawing 
 such lines and measuring and comparing the distances 
 between them. In the same way, the similarity in curva- 
 ture suggested by the outer lines of calves, thighs, and 
 shoulders, prompts us to imagine similar curves drawn; 
 and in case there be any deviation in outline from confor- 
 mity to a segment of one of these curves, the eye will ob- 
 serve the fact; and the parts of the contours about which 
 they are described will not seem to be constructed on the 
 same lines, as we say, and, therefore, will not seem to be in 
 proportion. So much as to the general principles in ac- 
 cordance with which such lines are made the basis of 
 aesthetic judgments, either because they are actually 
 delineated or are merely imagined. — Idem, vii. 
 
 For instance, take the outlining conditions of pictures 
 produced upon stained glass, especially in windows. Such 
 windows are always constructed on a network of bars which 
 cannot be hidden; and these necessitate dividing whatever 
 is represented on the glass into certain parts. Why has it 
 
280 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER '5 CABINET 
 
 never occurred to artists to have these bars divide human 
 forms, when crossing them, into parts of Hke longitudinal 
 dimensions? Straight lines, cannot give us, perhaps, the 
 most important indication of the measurements determin- 
 ing the proportions of the human form. But such lines 
 can give us some indication, and, so far as they do this, the 
 artist, alive to his opportunities, will utilize them, it being 
 an elementary principle in art that its necessary limitations 
 should be made to add to its effectiveness. — Idem, vi. 
 
 PROPORTION IN HUMAN FORMS INDICATED BY LIKE CURVES. 
 
 Figures of various outlines can be made to seem to be in 
 proportion, when they are, or can be, framed not only in 
 like rectangles, but in any like figures whatever. The 
 rectangle is used as an actual or ideal standard of compari- 
 son merely as a matter of convenience. It is comparatively 
 easy to recognize whether or not straight lines, such as 
 rectangles have, are of the same lengths, or are the same 
 distances apart, or have, in other regards, other measure- 
 ments that are in proportion. It would be a mistake, 
 however, to suppose that the standard of measurement is, 
 or, in all cases, can be rectangular. Take the human 
 form. It is ordinarily divided into equal parts by hori- 
 zontal lines, and these lines are undoubtedly an aid in 
 determining the proportions. But, as will be shown on 
 page 68, effective aid may be afforded by circles also. . . . 
 There is a reason for the use of these circles as a standard 
 of measurement derived from the physiological require- 
 ments of the eye, especially in binocular vision. This 
 reason will be found unfolded in Chapter XVI. Here it 
 is sufficient to say . . . that when all the circumferences of 
 the circles described about the same figure are the same, the 
 eyes are supposed to be focussed for distinct vision at exactly 
 the same distance. At a certain distance from the form, for 
 instance, all the circles are of one size, but nearer than this 
 all of them are of another size. . . . 
 
 A very interesting illustration of the aid afforded by. . . 
 the perception of the fact that like is put with like, may 
 be observed in . . . the curve which Ruskin, in his ** Mod- 
 ern Painters," declares to be the most common in nature. 
 The curve is one so described as to show a constant 
 tendency to become straight, although never becoming 
 straight. . . . 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 281 
 
 . . . Any one who will go over any representations of the 
 human figure with compasses will be surprised to find how 
 large a part of a segment of exactly the same curve fits 
 either the bend of the calf, forearm, thigh, abdomen, chest, 
 or back. If then his experience — say at a bathing-place — 
 causes him to recall the aesthetic influences of such forma- 
 tions as a long arm or leg combined with great leanness, or 
 a small chest combined with an abnormally large abdomen, 
 he will find upon reflection that the effects of disproportion, 
 while attributable partly to association, are also attributable 
 partly to a recognition of an absence of like curves. Or, to 
 illustrate this fact from a contrary condition, everybody ad- 
 mires a small ankle and a good-sized calf. Yet the moment 
 the calf becomes so large proportionately as to interfere 
 with the suggestions of a like curve in this, and in the out- 
 lines of the hip, almost everybody is conscious of receiving 
 a suggestion of disproportion. — Idem, v. 
 
 PROPORTION VS, PERSPECTIVE {seC also GENERAL AND DISTANT 
 VS. SPECIFIC AND NEAR EFFECTS, and PERSPECTIVE). 
 
 As indicated in either opinion or production, the artistic 
 intelligence of our own time has, as yet, scarcely an appre- 
 hension, and no comprehension whatever, of that which 
 is acknowledged to have formed the chief visual excellence 
 of Greek art. The author is convinced that this fact is 
 owing almost wholly to a misunderstanding of the aims of 
 proportion, together with a confounding of it with perspec- 
 tive. — Idem, Preface. 
 
 It will be recognized that the supposition that all these 
 buildings were constructed with primary reference to pro- 
 ducing a certain apparent effect when viev/ed from some 
 point or points at a distance, is the only one that can furnish 
 the same reason, and a sufficient one, for all the different 
 methods of producing these effects, — methods as different, 
 for instance, as that in the forward curve of the entabla- 
 ture and as in the upward curve of the entablature or of the 
 stylobate. Moreover, such a supposition is the only one 
 that can give the same reason, and a sufficient one, for the 
 application of the same method in order to produce the 
 same effects, yet with almost infinite differences in measure- 
 ments, in different temples. Here are some of these meas- 
 urements . . . they probably have nothing to do with 
 proportion, per se, but merely with producing the appear- 
 
282 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER* S CABINET 
 
 ances to which, after being made to appear as they do, the 
 principles of proportion apply. The best clue to the 
 interpretation of these irregularities seems to be afforded 
 by the methods of introducing perspective into painting. 
 It is not considered necessary in this latter art to apply 
 the laws of perspective with mathematical exactness. 
 Each draftsman, in arranging his outlines, feels at liberty to 
 stand off from his drawing, and, as a result of repeated 
 examinations and experiments, to use his own ingenuity. 
 Indeed, even if these laws were applied with mathematical 
 exactness, the required measurements would differ with 
 every foot by which a man stood nearer to his product, or 
 farther from it. Precisely so in architecture ... as 
 Vitruvius says, very unequivocally, in book iii., chapter iii., 
 *'To preserve a sensible proportion of parts, if in high 
 situations or of colossal dimensions, we must modify them 
 accordingly, so that they may appear of the size intended." 
 — Idem, XIV. 
 
 Every painter knows that colors and shadows as examined 
 close at hand in the external world often differ greatly from 
 what they appear to be to one who judges of them by the 
 image on the retina. To him an actually checkered surface 
 may appear to be of a single color, and a color, owing to the 
 influence of surrounding hues, may appear unlike that which 
 it actually is. The same fact is true with reference to out- 
 lines. The eye is rounded and therefore the mind behind it 
 sees everything through a rounded surface. If one look into 
 a convex mirror he will find all of the dimensions of the 
 natural world slightly altered. As a rule, for instance, 
 the straight upward lines of a square object with its base 
 on the middle line of the mirror will appear not to be 
 parallel but to approach one another. The effects in the 
 mirror merely exaggerate the effects already exerted upon 
 nature by the rounded formation of the eye. As applied 
 to natural surroundings, we become accustomed to these 
 effects and never judge lines to be curved or lacking in 
 parallelism merely because they are so in the image on 
 the retina. On the contrary, unless they were so in this 
 image, we should judge the lines to be neither straight nor 
 parallel. Accordingly, when men try, as in drawing a 
 picture, to reproduce the appearance of such an image, it 
 becomes important for them to carry out what are termed 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 283 
 
 the laws of linear perspective. These are laws, as will be 
 explained in Chapter XIV., in accordance with which all 
 the outlines of an artificial image, whether drawn, painted, 
 carved, or constructed, or however changed in size, are 
 made among other things to sustain somewhat the same 
 relations as in an image naturally produced on the retina. 
 Notice, moreover, that to fulfil these laws of perspective 
 so as to make this artificial image correspond to the image 
 in the eye is one thing; and that to make the respective 
 dimensions of this image appear to fulfil, each to each, 
 the laws of proportion is another thing. Yet it is quite 
 easy and natural to confound the two. We need not be 
 surprised, therefore, to find them almost invariably con- 
 founded in theories of proportion, especially in those 
 which have had most influence in causing men to think 
 that the subject is too complex and mysterious for solu- 
 tion. Those who have advanced these theories have 
 failed to recognize that the analogue of proportion is not 
 harmony but rhythm. Moreover, as rhythm is an effect 
 of the conscious action of the mind, its general principles 
 are comparatively easy to ascertain; and, by carrying out 
 the analogies suggested by them, the explanation of the 
 effects of proportion may be rendered comparatively 
 easy. But the processes through which the ear becomes 
 cognizant of the harmonic relations between musical notes 
 and chords are difficult to ascertain, for the very reason 
 that the mind is not conscious of these processes. No 
 wonder, therefore, that a theory identifying with them 
 those of proportion by which the mind, through the eye, 
 becomes cognizant of the relations existing between spaces, 
 should involve difficulties. — Idem, iii. 
 
 QUALITY {see REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF COLORS, and 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF TONES). 
 
 RANK OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 The rank of a work of art is determined not only by its 
 aim, but by the degree in which it attains this aim, whatever 
 it may be ; and the higher the aim, the more difficult often 
 is it to reach. But just as a drama, if successful, is greater 
 than a ballad, so a painting in which the representation of 
 thought and emotion is directly necessitated, is greater 
 than one in which this is not the case. — Painting, Sculpture, 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, xiv. 
 
284 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 READING, TO ACQUIRE LITERARY STYLE. 
 
 Most of us know that a good literary style is cultivated 
 by acquaintance with good literature even more than by 
 studying rhetoric, in however excellent a manual; and we 
 know, too, that no small part of the beneficial influence of 
 this literature, whether oratory or poetry, is derived from 
 testing how it sounds, which involves getting the benefit 
 of its distinctively elocutionary effects. — Essay on The 
 Principles of Writing and Speaking the Same. 
 
 REALISTIC ART {see EPIC, etc.). 
 REFLECTIVE AND INSTINCTIVE MENTAL ACTION IN ART- WORK. 
 
 By instinctive mental processes are meant those which 
 are conducted according to unconscious methods, and are 
 analogous, for this reason, to the results of the promptings 
 of instinct in the lower animals. It is in this instinctive way 
 that the child utters ejaculations, to which, as shown on 
 page 4, certain of our words owe their origin, and it is in the 
 same way that melodies and verses are sometimes composed, 
 singing themselves into existence, the musician or poet 
 hardly knowing how or whence they come. In the same way, 
 too, children and the uncultivated gesture, and even draw 
 and carve and build, the action of mind in the elementary 
 processes of these arts not being essentially different from 
 that in which the bees or birds or beasts construct their 
 honeycombs or nests or dens. But poetry and music deal 
 also with words, notes, and phrases, originated with a clear 
 reflective consciousness of surrounding phenomena with 
 which, by way of imitation or description, the sounds used 
 in the arts are made to compare. It is the same in the arts 
 of sight. What is there constructed by an animal showing 
 thought and discrimination, — and, in this sense, reflection 
 with reference to surrounding appearances — of the same 
 quality as that which characterizes the forms used in 
 painting, sculpture, and architecture? It is owing, more 
 than to anything else, to this reflective action of the mind, 
 working according to the calculating methods of reason 
 that, even though general conceptions of paintings, statues, 
 or buildings may result from sudden and instinctive inspi- 
 rations, all of them, if works of art, are, as a rule, produced 
 slowly, and with a clear conception of the reason for the 
 introduction of each detail. — Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, i. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 285 
 
 REFLECTIVE AS WELL AS INSTINCTIVE MENTAL ACTION IN 
 ART WORK. 
 
 Of course, all nature has some effect upon the mind, 
 whether or not one is distinctly conscious of the fact. It is 
 conceivable, therefore, that a picture composed with no 
 higher purpose than that of exact imitation might prove — 
 just as would the natural scene which it imitates — exceed- 
 ingly significant. Many a man who desires to do no more 
 than tell a good story in a tale or a ballad does this so 
 graphically that it is as full of imaginative suggestiveness 
 as if he had intended to make it so. The same result follows 
 in landscape painting. The art of a product must be judged 
 by the effect which it produces, not by the method of 
 producing this. If a painter happen to select a suggestive 
 scene, his imitation of it may be equally suggestive. But 
 it is simply a fact, and one that needs always to be borne 
 in mind, that notwithstanding some exceptional successes of 
 this kind, no story-teller or painter can, as a rule, produce a 
 series of successful products except as a result of an intelligent 
 adaptation of artistic means to artistic ends. — Idem, xiv. 
 
 REGULARITY IN ART {see also IRREGULARITY). 
 
 The two sides of even a very symmetrical tree do not 
 exactly correspond, and a tree depicted in art is most apt to 
 have the appearance of life, if the same be true of it. The 
 two sides of a man's body are more nearly alike than those 
 of a tree; but in the degree in which he possesses life and 
 consequent grace, they will, while suggesting likeness, be 
 made unlike by the positions which he assumes. — The 
 Genesis of Art- Fornix xi 
 
 A picture in which paths or trees or bridges are arranged 
 in uninterrupted rows as geometrically regular as the 
 threads of a spider's web, seems to be in the highest degree 
 unnatural. Even though a literal copy of some park in 
 actual existence, we feel like blaming the artist for not 
 choosing to copy a scene giving more evidences of nature 
 as God left it. In this, we should usually find places where 
 lawns, bushes, forests, rivers, hills, or other paths, trees, or 
 hedges crossed or stopped the straight lines, or made them 
 bend away in other directions. — Idem, xiv. 
 
 REGULARITY IN ART, WHAT IT MEANS (see olsO BEAUTY 
 HUMAN, and PROPORTION IN HUMAN FORMS). 
 
 In the arts of sight, regularity is a result, primarily, of 
 
286 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 like effects produced by measurements, just as in poetry 
 and music it is a result of like effects produced by meas- 
 ures. As outlines surround both spaces and shapes, these 
 like effects may be produced by resemblances either in the 
 one or in the other. For instance, if, in a door, a square panel 
 alternate with a circular one, and the opposite sides of the 
 square be the same distance apart as those of the circle, i.e., 
 if the diameters of both figures have the same measurements, 
 then men consider this arrangement an illustration of regu- 
 larity, though the likeness is in the spaces occupied not in 
 the shapes occupying them; or if in a human face there be 
 the same distance or measurement between the hair of the 
 forehead and the eyes, and between the eyes and the nostrils, 
 and between the nostrils and the chin, men say that the 
 features, so far as this fact can make them so, are regular, 
 though there is likeness only in spaces not in shapes. But 
 the term is applied sometimes to shapes alone. When 
 each part of a curve or angle, as in an arch over a window, 
 bears the same relations to the whole, that each part of 
 another curve or angle bears to another whole, which 
 nevertheless occupies less space ; or when one part of a curve 
 or an angle is like another part of the same curve or angle, 
 as is sometimes the case with the curve over the eyebrows ; 
 or is related in the same way to some third feature, as the 
 eyebrows are to the nose, — ^in these cases, too, because the 
 mere shapes are alike, there is said to be regularity. — 
 Paintingy Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 VI. 
 
 REGULARITY IN NATURE AND ART 
 
 The impression that we most instinctively form of 
 nature, so far as man has not touched it, is that of irregu- 
 larity. As a rule, this and nothing else is what mountains, 
 valleys, rocks, lakes, whether we consider their outlines 
 or arrangements, seem to us to illustrate. For this reason, 
 in a thoroughly successful painting of nature, the contours 
 of hills, dales, rivers, foliage, and the forms of animals and 
 men are never arranged along the lines of a framework with 
 a too inflexible regard for such characteristics as radiation, 
 parallelism, or balance'; or, if they be, these methods are 
 concealed so as not to be recognizable without study. 
 Otherwise, the result would seem not even artistically 
 
 ^ See page 89 of this volume. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 287 
 
 natural but unnatural and artificial, regularity of outline 
 being almost invariably an indication of the effects upon 
 natural appearances of the reflective characteristics of man. 
 This can be exemplified equally from landscape gardening 
 and landscape painting. An artist, especially one of an 
 early historic period, is almost as likely to arrange bushes 
 and trees in symmetrical groups, if not rows, in the latter 
 art as in the former, provided he can find or imagine a view- 
 point from which this can be done; and, when depicting 
 living beings capable of being moved about, he is sure to 
 arrange them thus. Even in most imitative paintings, he 
 sometimes changes the outlines of hills and valleys, or, if 
 he cannot do this, he introduces regularity through the use 
 of color. When it comes to architecture, where he is left 
 free to design the whole appearance, regularity is usually 
 the main characteristic. — Idem, vi. 
 
 RELIGION AIDED BY ART {see ARTISTS VS. SEERS). 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose, however, that art, 
 because different from religion, is antagonistic to it. The 
 truth is just the contrary. It can be said, almost without 
 qualification, that in all times of extreme traditionalism 
 and unenlightenment art has proved the only agency that, 
 without offending ignorance and superstition, has been 
 able to counterbalance their influence. It has done this 
 by using the forms of nature, and contenting itself with the 
 truth as represented in them. Guised in familar aspects, 
 appealing to the mind by way of suggestion which leaves 
 the imagination free to surmise or to deduce whatever 
 inference may appeal to it, the thoughts expressed in art do 
 not, as a rule, repel even the most prejudiced, or excite their 
 opposition. A man in Italy, in the thirteenth century, 
 would have been sent to the stake if he had made a plain 
 statement to the effect that a pope could be kept in hell, or a 
 pagan admitted to paradise. Yet when Dante pictured 
 both conditions in his great poem, how few questioned his 
 orthodoxy! So with the themes of painting and of sculp- 
 ture. What a rebuke to the bigotry and the cruelty of the 
 Middle Ages were the countless products of the arts of those 
 periods, pleading constantly to the eye against the savage 
 customs of the times for the sweet but little-practised virtues 
 of justice and charity ! Within our own century, too, not- 
 withstanding the traditions of society, the State and the 
 
388 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 Church, which have often exerted all their powers to~up- 
 hold and perpetuate slavery, aristocracy, and sectarianism, 
 recall how the modern novel chiefly, but assisted largely 
 by the modern picture, has not only changed the whole 
 trend of the world's thought with reference to these sys- 
 tems, but has contributed, more, perhaps, than any other 
 single cause, to the practical reorganization of them, in 
 accordance with the dictates of enlightened intelligence. 
 Notice, too, that this influence of art extends to the whole 
 region covered by religion, whether pertaining to this 
 world or to the next. In ages like our own, when men 
 rely chiefly upon the guidance of the conscious mind, it is 
 extremely difficult for them to be brought to realize that 
 there is any trustworthy guidance attributable to the action 
 of the subconscious mind. Art does not discuss this 
 guidance, but presupposes it. Through the results of the 
 subconscious mind coalescing with those of the conscious 
 mind it everywhere surrounds the material with the halo 
 of the spiritual, causing those who will not even acknowl- 
 edge the existence of the latter, to enter upon a practical 
 experience of it in ideas, and to accept, when appearing 
 in the guise of imagination, what they would reject if 
 presented in its own lineaments. So the artist, though not 
 a seer, always has within him the possibility of being the 
 seer's assistant. — Essentials of jEstheticSj iii. 
 
 Probably no art-product has ever continued to influence 
 ages succeeding its own, except in the degree in which it 
 has shown itself to be the work of a man deeply interested, 
 as a matter of sentiment at least, in religious, moral, social, or 
 intellectual problems, and in their effects upon humanity. 
 The oldest music that we have is all of it religious. So, 
 when it is not merely ethical, is the oldest poetry. This is 
 true not only of that which is in the Bible, and the Vedas of 
 India, but in the Iliad, the ^Eneid, and in all the greatest 
 tragedies of the Greeks. So is much of the best of modern 
 poetry also, — that of Dante, Racine, Spenser, Milton, 
 Wordsworth, Schiller, and Shakespeare. Very nearly as 
 large a proportion of quotations having to do with the right 
 conduct of life can be taken from this last poet as from 
 the Bible itself. Nor are they brought into his plays in- 
 cidentally, though they are brought in artistically, i. e., 
 in such ways as to aid in the representation of the characters 
 
Doorway of a Church in Jak, Hungary 
 See pages 24, 25, 82-85, I47> 148, 162, 268, 385 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 289 
 
 depicted. Yet even to aid in this, they are often so un- 
 necessary as to prove that their author is intentionally 
 availing himself of an opportunity to introduce thought of a 
 distinctly religious or moral tendency. — The Representative 
 Significance of Fornix xv. 
 
 When an artist depicts nature just as it is, if there be any 
 such thing as natural religion, he produces upon the mind 
 something of the effect of natural religion. If he depict 
 humanity, he produces — if there be any such thing — some- 
 thing of the sympathetic effect of social religion. And in 
 both cases he adds to the effect the influence which each has 
 had upon his own character, and produces, if he have any, 
 something of the effect of personal religion. Art combines 
 the influences of God in nature, God in humanity, and 
 God in the individual. It makes an appeal that is natural, 
 sympathetic, and personal; but it does all this in a way 
 that seems divine, because the factors of representation 
 are reproductions of the divine handiwork. — Essay on Art 
 and Education. 
 
 In the old, and by no means beautiful chapel at Prince- 
 ton, the faculty were never able to repress entirely certain 
 irreverent forms of disturbance, — like keeping step with a 
 Freshman when he walked to his seat. When the time 
 came to move into the new Marquand Chapel, some one 
 suggested, in a meeting of the faculty, that the students be 
 particularly requested and warned not to continue these 
 practices. After discussion, however, it was decided to 
 postpone action until something had been done to necessi- 
 tate it. Nothing ever did necessitate it. Every tendency 
 to disorder was, apparently, completely suppressed by a 
 mere change to a more aesthetic environment. — Essay on 
 Art and Morals: Note. 
 
 Under the pediment of the temple, the arches of the 
 cathedral, the dome of the mosque, always, too, in the 
 degree in which these are great works of art, the predomi- 
 nating impression is that of the universal fatherhood of 
 God, which all alike represent. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 The student of art cannot keep from learning through 
 personal experience how months and years of exercise in 
 voice and gesture, in playing music, in drawing, in painting, 
 in carving, give one a mastery over the physical possibilities 
 of the body not only, but of the mind. He is forced to 
 
 Z9 
 
290 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 realize as others cannot that there comes to be a time when 
 every sHghtest movement through which music, for 
 instance, passes with the rapidity of electricity from a 
 printed score through the mind and fingers of a performer, 
 is overseen and directed by mental action which, while 
 intelligent, works unconsciously, all the conscious powers 
 of the mind being absorbed in that which is producing the 
 general expressional effect. The student of art has thus 
 before him constant experimental evidence of the way in 
 which the higher mental nature can gain ascendency over 
 both the lower physical and the lower psychical nature. 
 He knows practically as well as theoretically in what sense it 
 can be true spiritually that the man who is to enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven, who is to become with all his powers 
 subject to the spirit that is sovereign there, and who is, 
 without conscious effort, to embody in conduct its slightest 
 promptings, is the man who consciously starts out with 
 scrupulous and often painful efforts to do the will of the 
 Father who is in heaven. — Idem. 
 
 RELIGION AN AID TO ART. 
 
 But a man would mistake if for these reasons he were 
 to suppose that art can be an entire substitute for religion. 
 It can no more be this in that which has to do with inspira- 
 tion than it can be a substitute for science in that which 
 has to do with investigation. In an age in which there is 
 little scientific accuracy, there is little artistic accuracy ; and 
 in an age in which there is little religious inspiration there 
 is little artistic. The subconscious mind works in accord- 
 ance with suggestion. The stimulus of religious suggestion 
 is needed by art in order to attain the loftiest heights of 
 imaginative effort. Of course this suggestion can be 
 experienced in the degree only in which there is a certain 
 practical belief in the relation of subconscious to conscious 
 mental action, even if there be not a clear theoretical 
 understanding of it. — The Representative Significance of 
 Forniy VII. 
 
 RELIGION AND SCIENCE AIDS TO ART. 
 
 It would be difficult, in fact, to discover a single element 
 necessary to success in religious or scientific endeavor 
 which, if held in due subordination, is really not available 
 in the realm of aft. Religion is an aid to it because, to 
 interpret the truth of nature in all its depth and breadth 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 291 
 
 of pureness and of charity, one must have a spirit capable 
 of being often drawn into sympathy with that which is 
 purest and best in nature. . . . And science, too, is an aid 
 to art ; and in the same category with science we must place 
 all those phases of life which are appropriate subjects of 
 investigation, everything that can enlighten man with 
 reference to the laws of nature or of mind, or to the histories 
 of either. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 RELIGION VS, ART {sce ARTISTS VS. SEERS). 
 
 Religion unfolds like a plant from within. Its germs are 
 of a kind hidden in nature, in the animal and in man, and 
 when it reaches the thoughts, words, and deeds over which 
 the mind exercises conscious control, it influences these in 
 a manner peculiar to a tendency of instinct, a prompting 
 of conscience, a motive to action. Of course a tendency, 
 a prompting, a motive, cannot be expressed outwardly 
 except as a man uses something like bodily speech or action 
 that can be heard or seen. Like art, religion, therefore, 
 is obliged in all forms of expression to exert more or less 
 of a material influence upon the material body and its 
 material surroundings. But in religion the essential matter 
 is that these material forms of expression should always 
 be subordinate to the promptings of the higher spiritual 
 nature. ... In art the conditions are different. It in- 
 volves no necessary subordination of the outward to the 
 inward. There is always a cooperation between the 
 two, in which sometimes the one seems the more prominent 
 and sometimes the other, but in no case does the mind 
 fail to recognize the demands of its material surroundings. , 
 or to aim at conformity to these. It is the essential condi- 
 tion of art that it should manifest this conformity: that 
 it should produce a dramatic imitation, a melody, a meta- 
 phor, a picture, a statue, a building, whatever it may be, 
 which in some way emphasizes the influence of these sur- 
 roundings. Even as appHed to ordinary action, a man 
 who can be specially commended for the art which he 
 manifests in conversation or in conduct is not the one 
 who would most naturally be selected as an exemplification 
 of that faith which underlies the disregard of material 
 conditions involved often in speaking the truth, and always 
 in marching to martyrdom. — Idem, ix. 
 
 Religious effects are seldom produced by what are recog- 
 
293 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 nized clearly to be copies of mere forms. A Christian 
 man through his conduct, and a church through its ser- 
 vices, may represent the Christian life, but the moment 
 that the representative element in either is emphasized, 
 the moment that it is brought to our attention that the 
 man's actions, attitudes, or facial and vocal expressions 
 are assumed for the purpose of representing, he suggests 
 to us a Pharisee, if not a hypocrite. With art it is the 
 opposite. Its object is to represent; and the actor upon 
 the stage, or any imitator of real life as delineated in the 
 drama or the novel, or depicted in the picture or the statue, 
 awakens our approval in the exact degree of the unmis- 
 takably representative character of his performance. — 
 Essentials of Esthetics, iii. 
 
 RELIGIOUS vs. ARTISTIC TRUTH. 
 
 There is much religious truth in "Paradise Lost," for 
 instance, but there might have been just as much of this 
 in a poorly written prose work. What makes Milton's 
 religious truth artistic, is its poetic embodiment; and the 
 peotry is just as artistic, so far as concerns this alone in 
 places in which there is no suggestion of religion. — The 
 Representative Significance of Form, vii. 
 
 REPETITION IN ART. 
 
 Repetition and everything associated with it have 
 their origin in the exigencies of form. At the same time, 
 we cannot be reminded too frequently that all forms, as 
 used in art, are methods of representing thoughts or feel- 
 ings by rendering them more concrete and emphatic. 
 . . . The slightest perceptible rubbing or scratching 
 against any part of our body, if repeated a sufficient number 
 of times, will cause inflammation. The slightest perceptible 
 vibration that can affect the organs of hearing or sight, if 
 repeated with sufficient rapidity and persistency, will 
 produce a sound or a color, and nothing except repetition 
 will do this. The same is true of its use when appealing 
 more directly to the mind. "What a wonderfully complete 
 system of police signalling these Germans have!" said an 
 English gentleman to me in Stuttgart. "They are at it 
 now, as they have been for nights past." We stepped 
 out upon a balcony which stood high on a hillside, and 
 looked down upon the moon-lit city. "Listen," he said; 
 ** first you hear a whistle off there at the railway station; 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 293 
 
 then one at the palace; then one farther up here on the hill.** 
 I listened ; and what I heard, and what he had heard, came 
 from tree-toads in the garden under us. A single note 
 would not have attracted his attention. It was the repeti- 
 tion of the notes that had filled his imagination with visions 
 of socialists, and the efficiency of police supervision under 
 a military government. — The Genesis of Art-Form, Xll. 
 
 REPRESENTATION A CHARACTERISTIC OF .ESTHETIC ART. 
 
 A few words may be in place in order to make more clear 
 the reason for the use of the term representative to express 
 the general effect produced by all the art-forms. This 
 term is not a new one, though it has not previously been 
 applied without more limitation. Nor has it been selected 
 in ignorance of the distinction which certain English critics 
 have made between what they call the representative 
 and the presentative arts; but in the belief that this distinc- 
 tion springs from misapprehension, and in its results involves 
 that tendency to error to which misapprehension always 
 leads. The way in which the term came to be chosen 
 was as follows. In order to simpHfy the task of art-criticism, 
 it seemed important to search for a single word expressive 
 of an effect, the presence or absence of which in any work 
 should determine the presence or absence in it of artistic 
 excellence. This word representative, without any distor- 
 tion of its most ordinary meanings, was found to meet the 
 requirements. It was found, moreover, that it could be 
 applied to all the art-forms considered in either of the two 
 relations which exhaust all their possibilities; considered, in 
 other words, either as expressive of thought and feeling in 
 the mind of the artist, or as reproducing by way of imita- 
 tion things heard or seen in the external world. To illus- 
 trate this — and from an art, too, which we are told is merely 
 presentative — let one be hstening to an opera of Beethoven 
 or Wagner, and desirous of determining the quality of the 
 music as conditioned by its power of expression — how can 
 he do this? — In no way better than by asking: first, what 
 phase of feeling is the music intended to represent? and, 
 second, does it represent what is intended? With equal 
 success, he can use the same questions with reference to 
 the story told in a ballad, the characters delineated in a 
 drama, the events depicted in a painting, the ideal typified 
 in a statue, the design embodied in a building. He can 
 
294 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 apply the same questions, too, to the forms considered as 
 imitations of things heard or seen. Handel's "Pastoral 
 Symphony" and the music of the Forest Scene in Wagner's 
 "Siegfried" express not only certain phases of feehng, 
 but these as influenced by certain surrounding conditions 
 of external nature; and though, for reasons to be given 
 hereafter, music is the least imitative of the arts, it is not, 
 for this reason, as some have claimed, merely presentative. 
 Such works as have been mentioned must contain at least 
 enough of the imitative element to represent, by way of 
 association, if no more, the surroundings suggested. The 
 same may be affirmed of the accessories or situations in 
 a ballad or a drama; and of the colors, proportions, or 
 natural methods of adapting means to ends in a painting,, 
 a statue, or a building. 
 
 The term representative, as thus appHed, moreover, is 
 appropriate not only in the sense indicated by ordinary 
 usage, but in the specific sense indicated by its etymology. 
 The peculiarity of art, and of all art, is that it not only 
 presents, but literally re-presents; that is, presents over 
 and over again in like series of movements, metaphors, 
 measures, lines, contours, colors, whatever they may be, 
 both the thoughts which it expresses and the forms through 
 which it expresses them. — Art in Theory, Preface. 
 
 In the volume of this series of essays entitled "Art in 
 Theory," an endeavor was made to show that art in 
 general is nature made human, and that art of the highest 
 character is nature made human in the highest sense. It 
 was pointed out that, for this kind of art, only such forms 
 of nature are available as are audible and visible; and 
 that these forms in such art are well used only when 
 made significant of thoughts and emotions. In accordance 
 with this understanding, it was maintained that all the 
 higher arts are representative, and this in two senses, 
 — representative rather than communicative of thought or 
 emotion in the mind of the artist, which fact causes them 
 to be appropriately termed the humanities ; and representa- 
 tive rather than imitative of that which is audible or visible 
 in the mind's material environment, which latter fact causes 
 them to be appropriately termed the arts of form, i. e., of 
 appearance, or aesthetic, i. e., fitted to be perceived. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative 
 Arts, I. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 295 
 
 {Recapitulation:) In treating of each of the arts con- 
 sidered separately, the discussion is begun by showing 
 that it is natural as well as necessary for a man to express 
 his thoughts and emotions through audible or visible forms ; 
 and that a certain method of developing these forms causes 
 them to be artistic. It is shown, besides, that, even before 
 thus developed, the forms are all of them methods of com- 
 municating thoughts and feelings through using, for this 
 purpose, certain external factors which, in themselves, are 
 devoid of thought or feeling; in other words, that artists, 
 owing to an application of the principle of association or of 
 comparison, reveal operations of the mind through employ- 
 ing, either by way of appropriation or reference, the physical 
 phenomena of nature; and that, for this reason, we can 
 understand the arts fully only so far as we consider them 
 as representative, on the one hand, of mental conceptions, 
 and, on the other, of material surroundings. In the 
 volumes devoted to this subject, therefore, it is shown 
 that it is possible for every natural method of expression 
 to become thus representative, at times, both of the human 
 mind and of external nature. The elementary factors of 
 expression are shown to be, in the arts of sound, intonations 
 and words, and, in the arts of sight, gestures, drawings, 
 carvings, and other objects made by hand. From these 
 primarily it is argued that form in representative art 
 is developed. The ways in which it is developed are 
 indicated, first, by analyzing the methods in which these 
 factors are made to be expressive, and observing for what 
 phase of representation, either mental or material, each 
 phase of expression is fitted; and later by observing the 
 general efiEect of the representation produced when the 
 methods and phases are combined in a completed art-form. 
 Expression is found to be produced through different 
 methods of using, in the arts of sound, duration, force, 
 pitch, and quality of tone, and — respectively corresponding 
 to these, in the arts of sight — extension, strength of line, 
 hue, and mixture of hues. It is from these methods that 
 we derive and, as affected by instinctive, reflective, or 
 emotive tendencies, that we appropriate for representa- 
 tive purposes such effects as those of movement, pause, 
 accent, versification, metre, tune, tone, and other char- 
 acteristics of rhythm and harmony of sound; and such 
 effects as those of size, shape, shacfing, tinting, and other 
 
296 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 characteristics of proportion and harmony of Hne and 
 color. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, xxvi. 
 
 REPRESENTATION, BY MEANS OF ASSOCIATION AND COMPARI- 
 SON (see COMPARISON AND ASSOCIATION and WORDS, 
 THEIR meaning). 
 
 As thoughts and emotions cannot be heard or seen in 
 themselves, they cannot be presented or communicated to 
 another directly. They must be represented indirectly; 
 i. e., through the use of a medium differing from themselves 
 in that it can be heard and seen. This medium the mind 
 must find in material nature, the sounds and sights of which 
 it can accept, imitate, modify, and develop for the purposes 
 of expression, but cannot originate. While saying this, 
 however, it was also said that, among the sounds of nature 
 which may be used for artistic purposes must be included 
 any sounds whatever, even though traceable to men. Their 
 material bodies are manifestations of material nature; and, 
 this being so, of course the same is true of their instinctively 
 used, and what we may term natural, as distinguished from 
 artistic, vocal utterances. Among the sights of nature, 
 again must be included, for the same reason, any visible 
 movements or constructions of men; and, this being so, of 
 course included among them must be also their instinctively 
 used gestures. Owing to the imperceptible character of 
 that which is within our minds, all outward expressions of 
 this, and, therefore, all art, even of the most ordinary 
 kind, must exemplify the principle of representation. 
 But the highest art must do so most emphatically. This 
 is because it must give expression to processes of thought 
 and emotion of the highest, in the sense of the most subtle, 
 quality, and as these processes are the most distinctively 
 mental, they are the most distinctively different in essence 
 from any material form through which they can be expressed. 
 It is, therefore, particularly necessary that when used 
 as a vehicle for them the form should manifest this differ- 
 ence; and it can do so in the degree only in which it mani- 
 fests clearly what is its own nature as contrasted with theirs ; 
 in other words, in the degree only in which its representa- 
 tive, as contrasted with any possibly presentative character, 
 is particularly emphasized by being made particularly 
 apparent. This statement suggests that there is a connec- 
 tion between the use in art of the term representation, as 
 meaning the expression of thought and emotion, and its 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 297 
 
 more ordinary use in the second sense mentioned in our 
 opening paragraph, i. e., as meaning the imitation of external 
 phenomena. This connection arises from the fact that 
 the communicative intention of the forms of expression 
 can be made particularly apparent in the degree only in 
 which the imitative character of the factors composing 
 the forms — that is of the sounds and sights of external 
 nature — is made apparent. This is the ground taken in 
 Chapters VI. and VIII. of " Art in Theory," which are 
 devoted to showing that the representation of thoughts 
 and emotions and of external sounds and sights necessarily 
 go together. An artificially shaped machine, it was said, 
 at once suggests the question, "What can it do?" But 
 a drawing or carving with a form resembling something 
 in nature never suggests this question, but rather, "What 
 did the man who drew the object think about it or of it 
 that he should have made a copy of it?" The principle 
 that renders it possible for the forms of art to represent, 
 in the senses just indicated, both mental processes and ma- 
 terial surroundings is, in general, that of correspondence. But 
 subordinately, there are two different, though closely related, 
 principles in accordance with which this correspondence may 
 be manifested. One principle — which is the one mainly in- 
 volved in the representation of thoughts and emotions — is 
 that of association; the other, which is mainly involved in 
 the representation of the appearances of nature, is that of 
 comparison. — Paintings Sculpture, and Architecture as Repre- 
 sentative Arts, I. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN ART. 
 
 The conceptions of science are due, as we have found, 
 to an investigation, so far as possible, of every condition 
 preceding an apprehended phenomenon. Of course, what 
 is thus obtained can be imparted to others just as it is, 
 only so far as every factor entering into the knowledge 
 communicated has been given expression in the outward 
 form of communication, or, as we may say, has heen formu- 
 lated. On the contrary, the imagination of art draws its 
 ideas and constructs its ideals of a whole class of phenomena 
 from observing a few conditions only, which are the more 
 apparent ones and are taken as representative of all of them. 
 It is evident that what is thus obtained can be imparted 
 to others just as it is experienced in the mind, only so far 
 as these same few conditions can be given expression in the 
 
298 : AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 outward form in such ways as to exert on the minds of 
 others the same representative effects. — The Representative 
 Significance of Forrrij xii. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN ART VS. COMMUNICATION. 
 
 Just as representation is a more appropriate term than 
 imitation through which to indicate the result of an artistic 
 reproduction of the appearances of nature, so the same 
 word is more appropriate than communication or any 
 like term through which to indicate the artistic expression 
 of thoughts or feelings. If this were not so, if the primary 
 object of art were to communicate, then would it not 
 do this more successfully than do other forms of expression? 
 But does art do this more successfully? To say nothing 
 of music and architecture, which all men know to be very 
 deficient in the matter of communicating definite informa- 
 tion of any kind, do poetry, painting, and sculpture give a 
 more satisfactory communication with reference to thought 
 or feeling, in the sense of indicating more clearly exactly 
 what a particular thought or feeling is, than do sounds and 
 sights as they are used in ordinary speech and writing? 
 The moment we ask the question, we are ready to answer. 
 No. A frequent effect of making any method of communica- 
 tion more artistic is to make it less intelligible. As a rule, 
 sighs, shrieks, wails, can communicate, and cause a listener 
 to realize, too, the particular thought or feeling to which 
 they give expression far more unmistakably than is possible 
 for a musical passage, unaccompanied by words, whatever 
 ma}^ be the amount of its hush, trill, force, or complexity. 
 As a rule, a plain, direct utterance of sentiment, or state- 
 ment of fact, is far more readily apprehended, if that be 
 all that is desired, than the most imaginative effort of 
 poetry. As a rule, a few objects carelessly but clearly 
 drawn or carved, even if as rudely as in an ancient hiero- 
 glyph, a few tree-trunks roughly built together for support 
 and shelter, can convey intelligence of their purpose much 
 more distinctly than works of painting or sculpture or 
 architecture upon which men have expended years of 
 labor. Were the communication of thought or feeling the 
 object of art, it would be a very senseless undertaking to try 
 to attain this object and expend years of labor upon it by 
 making the forms of communication from which art is 
 developed less communicative. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 299 
 
 Yet, evidently, these forms of natural expression — in- 
 tonation, speech, drawing, coloring, constructing, — just 
 at the point where most satisfactory as means of com- 
 municating thought and feeling, lack something that art 
 needs. What is this? It is not difficult to tell, and is 
 clearly suggested by all that has been unfolded thus far 
 in this essay. They lack that which can be given, in 
 connection with expression, by the reproduction of the 
 effects of nature. Penmanship and hieroglyphics lack 
 the appearances of nature that are copied in painting and 
 sculpture. Prose lacks figures of speech and descriptions 
 that in poetry are constantly directing attention to the 
 same appearances; and even the elements subsequently 
 developed into music and architecture lack traces of a 
 very keen observation and extensive use of effects in 
 nature which would not need to be observed or used at 
 all, were the end in view attainable by the mere com- 
 munication of thought or feeling. Were communication 
 the end of any art, the elaboration of the forms of nature 
 would cease at the point where they became sufficient for 
 this purpose. But it does not cease there, and it does 
 not do so because art must express thought or feeling by 
 way not of communication, but of representation. — Essen- 
 tials of Esthetics, vii. 
 
 The method of the appeal to the mind in art is not 
 through direct unequivocal statements, but through in- 
 direct suggestive representations, which awaken interest 
 in order to stimulate the processes of imagination. — The 
 Representative Significance of Form, xiv. 
 
 What is imagination? It is the faculty of the mind that 
 forms images. Of course, in the degree in which the appeal 
 is made so definite that nothing, as we say, is left to im- 
 agination, it is not stimulated. Let us apply this principle 
 now to poetry. Words apparently convey definite mean- 
 ings, yet it is a fact that they can also be representative. 
 If not, they are merely presentative or communicative, and, 
 therefore, not poetic, but prosaic. To understand this 
 distinction is necessary to an understanding of poetic 
 art. Take, for instance, these verses by Longfellow. 
 What he wishes to say is that death may overtake the 
 artist before he acquires the skill on which his heart is set. 
 Had he merely communicated, or stated, this faot, he would 
 
300 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 have written prose; but he represented it, and therefore we 
 call what he wrote poetry, e. g., 
 
 Art is long and time is fleeting, 
 
 And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
 Still like muffled drums are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave. 
 
 The Psalm of Life. 
 — Essentials of /Esthetics^ vii. 
 
 Poetry may be strictly representative of external sights 
 and sounds, — may confine itself to that which reproduces 
 for the imagination a picture; and yet may be equally and 
 in the highest sense representative also of those ideas and 
 feelings which exist in only the mind. — Idem. 
 
 No matter how perfect rhythm or rhyme one may pro- 
 duce through arrangements of words, the result is prose, 
 not poetry, unless the thought, instead of being presented 
 directly, is represented, as we may say, indirectly, so as to 
 cause it to afford virtually an argument from analogy. 
 Frequently, one judges of poetic excellence by the degree in 
 which the thoughts or emotions could not be communicated 
 at all unless they were thus suggested rather than stated; 
 by the degree, therefore, in which their essential character 
 is subtle, intangible, invisible — in short, spiritual. — Essay 
 on Art and Education. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN ART VS. IMITATION {see IMITATION Vs). 
 
 I According to Webster, to represent means "to present 
 again either by image, by action, by symbol, or by sub- 
 stitute," and there is no possible use of natural forms in 
 art that cannot be included under one of these heads. Imita- 
 tion, which is, undoubtedly, a frequent process in art, can 
 be included thus ; but so can many other processes that are 
 not imitative. Representation has a broader applicability, 
 and by using this term we can get something expressing 
 the exact truth in all cases. An orchestral passage in an 
 opera, or a declamatory scene in a drama, cannot, strictly 
 speaking, copy or imitate, but it can represent an exchange 
 of thought between a demigod and a forest bird, as in 
 Wagner's "Siegfried," or a conversation between historic 
 characters as in Shakespeare's "Henry the Eighth." A 
 painting of a man on canvas, or a statue of him in marble, 
 does not, strictly speaking, copy or imitate a man, who, 
 actually considered, can be neither flat nor white; but it does 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 301 
 
 represent him. Columns, arches, and roofs do not, by any 
 means, copy or imitate, but they do represent the trunks 
 and branches and water-shedding leaves of the forest. 
 Nothing in fact that a man can make of the materials at his 
 disposal can, strictly speaking, copy or imitate in all its 
 features that which is found in nature; but he can always 
 represent this. — The Essentials of Esthetics, vi. 
 
 Of whatever art we may be speaking, it will not do to 
 say that its sole aim is to imitate nature, not even, putting 
 it in a milder form, that it is to reproduce the appearances 
 of nature. . . . The most that can be said with truth is that 
 the forms of nature are reproduced by the artist with the 
 aim of having them appeal to others as they have appealed 
 to himself, as they have exerted an effect upon his mind, as 
 they have influenced his thoughts and feelings. Of course, 
 in order to accomplish this aim merely, he must represent 
 the appearances so as to recall their state in nature, and, 
 where imitation is demanded, he must imitate with accu- 
 racy. But he would be the last in the world to acknowledge 
 that he has added to his work nothing originated in his 
 own brain, and that what he has produced is a simple 
 reproduction. He considers it a representation. — Art in 
 Theory, iv. 
 
 A like fact is true of the photograph. For the very 
 reason that it is an imitation, in the sense of being a literal 
 presentation, of every outline on which the light at the 
 time when it was taken happened to fall, it does not 
 awaken in us the kind or degree of imaginative interest 
 or of sympathy that we feel in paintings or statues. Un- 
 like the impressions that we receive from the photograph, 
 in gazing at these latter, we feel that we are looking through 
 an artist's eye, seeing only what he saw or thought fit for 
 us to see, and that everything in them is traceable to the 
 skill displayed by him in transferring what in nature is 
 presented in one medium into another, as in delineating 
 flesh and foliage through the use of color and in turning 
 veins and lace into marble. The same principle applies 
 in architecture. The man of the backwoods who came to 
 an early centre of civilization, and stood before the first 
 stone colonnade that he had seen, was not charmed with it 
 because it imitated so exactly the row of poles that supported 
 the projecting eaves of the huts which for centuries had 
 
302 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 been constructed by his ancestors; his delight was owing to 
 the fact of his perceiving in another material, exceedingly 
 difficult to work, that which represented the forms presented 
 to his view at home. — Idem. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN BUILDING (see ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE, and ARCHITECTURE REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 OF thought). 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN HARMONY. 
 
 As represented in sound, it may be said that every 
 mood that is absolutely normal, because healthful, strong, 
 buoyant, joyous, or unimpeded, or, to state this in a general 
 way, every mood in which the conditions appear to the 
 mind to be satisfactory, naturally tends to harmonic expres- 
 sion. On the contrary, every abnormal, unhealthy, 
 because weak, depressed, sad, or impeded mood, or every 
 mood in which the conditions appear to the mind to be 
 unsatisfactory, because leaving conceptions in a state of 
 suspense, naturally tends to inharmonic expression. This 
 latter is what we hear, therefore, in the moaning and 
 crying of weakness, in the fretting and complaining of 
 hopelessness and misery, and in any habits of tone, like 
 the so-called "ministerial, " which are produced by dwelling 
 upon the more pathetic aspects of subjects. ... As repre- 
 sented in music, this inharmonic effect is expressed in what 
 is termed the minor interval which, while itself not abso- 
 lutely inharmonic — if it were so it could not be used as a 
 factor of musical harmony, — is, nevertheless, suggestive 
 of a lack of harmony ; and it is this fact that accounts for the 
 associations that all have with this interval. It is the 
 musical adaptation of that which, in speech, represents 
 suspense, and, therefore, the depressed and pathetic. 
 There are other conditions, too. . . . That for which, when 
 listening to a series of chords, the musical ear is in search, 
 is harmony. Whenever, therefore, it does not hear this, 
 . . . the impression conveyed is that thought and feeling 
 are waiting for a desired consummation that delays coming. 
 ... It is forced, by a law of nature, to desire to have the 
 movements of the chords continue till the perfectly har- 
 monious is reached. For this reason, the chord of the 
 seventh augments the feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, 
 and prepares the mind, by way of contrast, for the restful, 
 satisfying closing effect of the chord of the keynote when, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 303 
 
 at the next sound, the phrase is brought to a conclusion. — 
 Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music: Music as a 
 Representative Art, v. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN MELODY. 
 
 I can now recall no melody of great popularity in which 
 underneath all the decorative vestiture of the form, however 
 much the pitch may be pushed up here or pulled down there, 
 it is not possible to detect general outlines true to certain 
 first principles of vocal expression. Some melodies, indeed, 
 like "Comin thro' the Rye" can be talked off with absolute 
 fidelity to every musical note. But if melody be thus 
 developed from speech, the same must be remotely true of 
 harmony, for this, in its turn, as shown in Chapters XII. to 
 XV. of '* Rhythm and Harmony," is itself, in its incipi- 
 ency, a development of melody. — Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, Preface. 
 
 What is true of this melody is true of almost every 
 melody that proves to be permanently popular. Beneath 
 what is sometimes great exaggeration, we can detect the 
 intonations natural to the speaking utterance of the senti- 
 ments expressed. This is the same as to say that, in such 
 cases, music, while in no sense imitative, is nevertheless 
 representative of the intonations of speech. In other 
 cases, it might be said to be a development of something 
 that lies behind the intonations of speech; and which, 
 though having the same cause, antedates them, i, e., a 
 development of humming in which almost every one, at 
 times, indulges. A man, in the subjective, absent-minded 
 condition in which he takes to humming, is usually uncon- 
 scious of the presence either of surrounding persons or of 
 sounds. He is not in a mood, therefore, either to address 
 the persons distinctly, or to repeat the sounds accurately. 
 But while this is true, it is also true that his method of 
 expression will necessarily, not in a specific but in a general 
 way, represent his surroundings. If he have ever heard, 
 especially if he have heard frequently, sounds like the 
 humming of bees, the whistling of winds or of railway 
 locomotives, or the notes of squirrels, quails, whippoorwills, 
 robins, catbirds, or of songs sung, or of exclamations or 
 speeches made by men and women about him, in nine cases 
 out of ten his own tones, at times unconsciously to himself, 
 but nevertheless actually, will imitate some of these sounds 
 
304 AN ART-PHILOSOPHERS CABINET 
 
 all of which, being external to himself, are, so far as he is 
 concerned, those of external nature. Music, therefore, 
 may be said to represent not only the natural intonations of 
 the human voice, but natural sounds coming from sources 
 that are not human. — Essentials of Esthetics, vi. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN MUSIC ($66 alsO PITCH). 
 
 Some have declared it to be presentative rather than 
 representative, not recognizing that a use of such elements 
 of duration, force, pitch, and quality as enable us to distin- 
 guish between a love-song, a dirge, and a tragic passage 
 would altogether fail to convey their meaning, unless there 
 were something in the movement to represent ideas or emo- 
 tions which we were accustomed to associate with similar 
 movements perceived in nature. — Idem, 
 
 It is evident that music may be representative in the 
 ways indicated without being in any distinctive sense 
 imitative. All that is necessary is that its successive phases 
 should follow a general order similar to that to which we 
 have become accustomed in certain series of sounds or sights 
 in nature. We have noticed, perhaps, a quiet rill devel- 
 oped into a cataract, and this again into a quiet pool; or 
 a clear sky developed into a storm and this again into a 
 clear sky; or peace developed into war and this again into 
 peace; and one or the other of these series of phenomena 
 is suggested to us when we hear a series of musical effects 
 developed in what appears to be a similar order. The 
 reason why these or any other phenomena are suggested 
 is because of the principle of correspondence, which, as has 
 been said, underlies all methods of expression, especially 
 those exemplified in discoursive elocution. According 
 to this principle, it is instinctively felt, even when not 
 consciously thought, that different phases of invisible and 
 inaudible moods follow one another in analogy to phases 
 of a visible or an audible character. — Rhythm and Harmony 
 in Poetry and Music: Music as a Representative Art, vii. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN MUSIC AND IN VISIBLE FORMS. 
 
 I once went over the motives of Wagner with the most 
 broadly cultured musician whom I knew, and I found that 
 while he perceived, at once, the representative elements in 
 what are ordinarily termed imitative passages, he failed to 
 perceive them, till pointed out to him, in many other 
 passages so unmistakably developed from the intonations of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 305 
 
 Speech that to me they seemed to talk — of course only in the 
 sense of voicing the trend of emotive processes which 
 alone is possible to music — almost as plainly as if the 
 notes were words. . . . What he lacked was my twenty 
 years' experience in teaching the melody of speech. So 
 with the significance of visible form. One whose experience 
 has forced him, as mine has, to the conclusion that every 
 shape of the human body, natural or assumed, has a mean- 
 ing peculiar to itself, though possibly beyond even an 
 expert's power of interpretation, finds himself, very soon, 
 according to the principle of association, drawing the same 
 conclusion with reference to all shapes, whether human or 
 not human. Those who think it not essential to discuss 
 the general accuracy of this conclusion, as applied to all 
 phenomena audible or visible; or who imagine that, if true, 
 art has no mission in revealing and emphasizing it, have, 
 simply, not learned all that life is designed to teach them ; or 
 those who conceive that the methods through which art can 
 fulfil this mission can be apprehended and appreciated with- 
 out their stopping to think over each detail of the subject, 
 to examine the exemplifications of it, and to apply many 
 original tests of their own to it, have not yet begun to 
 learn the methods through which life can teach them any- 
 thing of deep importance. — Painting, Sculpture, and Archi- 
 tecture as Representative Arts, Preface. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN POETRY, ALLOYED AND PURE (see LAN- 
 GUAGE, PLAIN AND figurative). 
 
 It has been said that whatever is added to representa- 
 tion of such a nature as to change it from pure to alloyed, 
 must come from the poet. This is true, and yet he may 
 not always be himself the primary source of these addi- 
 tions. He may get them either from his own mind or 
 from nature, — a term used here to apply to everything 
 external to himself. If he get them from his own mind, he 
 will carry into excessive development the tendency which 
 has been termed the instinctive, underlying ejaculatory 
 sounds and aU plain language; and his product will mani- 
 fest a preponderance of the features making up the thought 
 that he desires to express. If he get his additions from 
 nature, he will carry into excessive development the 
 tendency, which has been termed the reflective, underlying 
 imitative sounds and all figurative language; and his 
 
3o6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 product will manifest a preponderance of the features 
 employed in the form for the purpose of amplifying and 
 illustrating his thought. The first tendency, carried to an 
 extreme, will leave the form void of representation, and 
 make it explanatory or didactic; the second will overload 
 it with representation, and make it florid or ornate. 
 
 Taking up these tendencies in their order, we will ex- 
 amine now the former of them, and first, as exemplified 
 in poetry modeled upon direct representation. In this 
 form, as we have seen, the poet uses no similes nor meta- 
 phors. He states precisely what he wishes to say — only 
 what he says, if put in the form of poetry, must represent 
 his thought. If it merely present this, he gives us a product 
 not of the ideal art of poetry, but of the practical art of 
 rhetoric. This latter appeals to the mind through what 
 Sir William Hamilton termed the elaborative faculty, and 
 is characterized by a particularizing of details in explanatory 
 words and clauses, termed amplification, — all of which 
 details together enable the hearer to weigh the evidence 
 that is offered, and to draw from it trustworthy conclusions. 
 Poetry, on the contrary, appeals to the representative 
 faculty, and is characterized by an absence of any more 
 details or explanatory elements than are needed in order to 
 form a picture, and this for the reason that nothing appeals 
 so strongly to the imagination as a hint. At the same 
 time, as poetry and rhetoric both communicate ideas, 
 there is a constant tendency for the one to pass into the 
 other, for the poet to forget that the poetical depends not 
 upon ideas alone, but also upon the forms given to the 
 ideas, — in fact, to forget that, while great poetry must 
 necessarily embody great thoughts, very genuine poetry, 
 at times, may do no more than give to the merest "airy 
 nothings a local habitation and a name." 
 
 We have now to examine the effects of the ornate ten- 
 dency, in which considerations of form overbalance those 
 of thought, and in which therefore there is failure because of 
 an excess of representation. It is simply natural for one 
 who has obtained facility in illustrating his ideas to overdo 
 the matter, at times, and to carry his art so far as to re- 
 illustrate that which has been sufficiently illustrated or is 
 itself illustrative. The first form that we need to notice, 
 in which this tendency shows itself, is a poetic development 
 and extension of what rhetoricians term the "far-fetched" 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 307 
 
 Simile, a simile in which minor points of resemblance are 
 sought out and dwelt upon in minute detail and at un- 
 necessary length. The fault in this mode of illustrating, or 
 representing, lies in the fact that it does not illustrate nor 
 represent. The poet, in writing it, has made the form an 
 end and not a means. His thoughts, and methods of 
 developing them, are suggested by the representation, and 
 not by that which it is supposed to represent, and which his 
 readers naturally expect it to represent. Accordingly, his 
 readers cannot distinguish the main thought from the 
 illustrating thought, nor this again from the re-illustrating 
 thought, and the whole passage is necessarily more or less 
 obscure. The poet has not made his subject stand forth in 
 clear, concrete outlines, as art should do ; but has so veneered 
 and besmeared it with excess of ornamentation that no 
 one can tell very decidedly just what his subject is. . . . 
 
 Now, suppose a man in conversation were to let his 
 thoughts run on in this way, deviating from the line of his 
 argument or description, whenever he happened to strike 
 a word the sense or sound of which suggested something 
 different from that of which he started out to speak. What 
 should we think of him? One of two things, — either that 
 he was insane, or had a very poorly disciplined mind. 
 Precisely this is what is represented, so far as anything is 
 represented, by this kind of poetry. Yet, as we all know, 
 the finest and highest art must represent the finest and 
 highest efforts of the finest and highest powers of the mind. 
 If this be so, then poetry modeled upon a form which is the 
 legitimate and natural expression of an insane or a poorly 
 disciplined mind, is not poetry of the finest and highest 
 order. — Poetry as a Representative Art, xxiv. 
 
 We will examine now the form of representation which, 
 in contrast to pure, has been termed alloyed. This latter, 
 as has been said, while following in the main the methods 
 of picturing the thoughts that are used in pure representa- 
 tion, always introduces something into the picture in ad- 
 dition to what would naturally be perceived in connection 
 with circumstances like those that are being detailed. At 
 first thought, it might be supposed that these additions 
 would not greatly impair the poetry in which we find them. 
 But the fallacy of this supposition will appear, when we re- 
 call that poetry is an art, and that all art is representative. 
 
308 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 It follows from this that the purer the representation, the 
 purer will be the art, and in the degree in which anything 
 is added to the representation, — anything, that is, of such 
 a nature that in like circumstances it could not presumably 
 have been perceived, — in that degree will the product be 
 likely to lose its artistic qualities. 
 
 Some who may not recognize the truth of this state- 
 ment, when viewed from a theoretical standpoint, may, 
 when viewed from a practical. Let us look at it in this 
 way then: whatever is added to the representation must 
 come, in the last analysis, from the artist; and from him, 
 when not exercising his legitimate artistic functions; 
 when, instead of giving us a picture of nature and man, as 
 he finds them, he has begun to give us his own explana- 
 tions and theories concerning them. Now all explana- 
 tion and theories, as we know, are necessarily the out 
 growth — if not of ignorance or superstition — at least of 
 the intellectual or spiritual condition of the age in which 
 one lives. For this reason, to a succeeding age they are 
 not satisfactory, even if they do not prove to be wholly 
 fallacious; and a work of science or philosophy that is 
 made up of them usually dies, because men outgrow their 
 need of it, and do not care to keep it alive. A work of 
 artistic poetry, on the contrary, lives because its pages 
 image the phenomena of nature, and of human life, which 
 can really be perceived, and most of these remain from 
 age to age unchanged. A writer who confines himself to 
 these, which alone can be used legitimately in representa- 
 tion, is, as Jonson said of Shakespeare, "not of an age but 
 for all time"; and this fact can be affirmed of men like 
 him alone. Out of the thousands of poems written in the 
 past, only those have come down to us, and are termed 
 classic, which are characterized by an absence of explana- 
 tions and theories, and a presence of that kind of representa- 
 tion which has here been termed pure. How important, 
 then, it is for the poet of the present to understand just 
 what the nature and requirements of this pure representa- 
 tion are, and what are the methods of rendering it alloyed 
 that should be avoided. — Ideniy xxiii. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN SCULPTURE. 
 
 Most of the Venuses, like those of the Medici, of Dresden, 
 and of the Capitol, are represented in the attitude instinc- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 309 
 
 tive to a woman surprised in a state of nature. The infer- 
 ence, therefore, on the part of the spectator, is clear enough. 
 She is thinking, and her attitude obliges the spectator to 
 think, of her physical appearance, or beauty. The differ- 
 ence between the significance expressed in such a statue and 
 in that of the Apollo Belvedere, who with outstretched 
 arms and uplifted brow seems wholly unconscious of aught 
 save his own godlike mission to the race, is very great. 
 And what is the important matter to be observed is that 
 this difference is owing to movement not detailed 1 ut 
 suggested, not such as could be represented in poetry, or 
 in any form of language, but such as can be represented 
 in a manner strictly appropriate to only painting or statu- 
 ary, and yet, even in this, in a manner sufficiently distinct 
 to render the impression of life and of a distinctive character 
 of life unmistakable. — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, XXIV. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN SENTENCES FROM WHICH POETRY 
 DEVELOPS {see LANGUAGE, PLAIN AND FIGURATIVE). 
 
 Language is a form for thought, and thought implies 
 mental activity, a process, a series of sensations and experi- 
 ences, all of them exerting more or less influence upon one 
 another. A single idea might be represented in a single 
 word, but a series of ideas necessitates a series of words. 
 How, now, can these series of words represent, with any- 
 thing like accuracy, internal processes of the mind, together 
 with the necessary relationships and interactions that must 
 exist between their constituting elements? Or, to begin at 
 the right place, how can any series of external and material 
 elements, even though they do represent a process, represent 
 a process that takes place in thought? If we can come to 
 understand this, it will be easy for us to understand how, 
 according to a similar analogy, series of words can do the 
 same. Those of us who have been in countries with the 
 languages of which we were not familiar, have, perhaps, 
 improved our powers of origination, as well as started 
 original conceptions in the minds of those about us, through 
 presenting our internal processes of thought to men who 
 had not ears to heed our English, in the form of pantomime. 
 What other resource could we have, when thirsty or sleepy 
 or wishing to hire a hack or take a sail? But suppose 
 that we had been shut out from pantomime, and shut in to 
 
310 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 sound, how, according to the same analogy, could we have 
 expressed our processes of thought through the latter 
 medium? Had we possessed the power of rendering 
 intelligible to others our references to our internal sensa- 
 tions, as well as to external objects and operations, by the 
 use of exclamations, imitative sounds, and words derived 
 from them by association and comparison, — how could 
 we have combined all these elements in such a way as to 
 represent in sound a process of thought? Is not the answer 
 simple? Instead of taking two objects and joining or sepa- 
 rating them, could we not have taken two names for these 
 objects, and joined or separated these? or, if we wished to 
 make our meaning still more intelligible, joined the names 
 by putting between them an intervening exclamation expres- 
 sive of assimilation, or separated them by putting there an 
 expression of aversion? Could we not thus have repre- 
 sented in words what circumstances had prevented us from 
 representing in pantomime? Instead of emphatically 
 flinging ourselves on the floor, or pathetically resting our 
 heads upon our hands, when, tired out in the evening, we 
 desired to show our wish to go to bed why might we not 
 have exclaimed "I — bed," or "I — oh — bed"? Is not this 
 precisely what, though put in different forms, we have heard 
 the foreigner do, a hundred times, perhaps, when trying to 
 express in sound the thought which his ignorance of our 
 language prevented him from expressing fully? Is not this 
 precisely the method through which every child begins 
 the difficult process of conversation — i. e., by placing two 
 words together, which thus constitute a compound word; 
 or by uniting the two, one of which is used for the subject 
 of a sentence and the other for its object, by a third, which 
 serves the purpose of a predicate? And it is well to notice, 
 too, in this connection, that, whether used by a foreigner 
 or a child, the predicate is always the last essential factor 
 of a perfect sentence to be used with accuracy. "I seen 
 him," cried a street-boy under my window the other day; 
 "and I throw'd a stone at him." 
 
 While on this subject, in order to show that the use of 
 the exclamation for the verb in an expression like "I — oh 
 — bed," though, wholly supposititious, is not entirely out of 
 analogy with what is really done in language, it may be 
 interesting to recall what Max Miiller says of one of our 
 most common grammatical forms — it is. He tells us that 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 311 
 
 this sound can be traced back almost as far in language as 
 we can go. The German says ist, the Roman esty the Slave 
 yestCy the Greek esti, and the Hindoo asti. But asti is a 
 compound of the pronoun ti and the verb as, the root of 
 which signifies to breathe. Whatever breathes exists or 
 is; so that in the oldest language in which we find the 
 verb, it seems to be only an expression representative of the 
 fact, and, very probably, of the act of aspiration or breathing. 
 But, to return from theory to fact, we have found how 
 it is possible to put words together in such a way as to 
 indicate a process. Indeed, whenever we put them to- 
 gether in the right way, they necessarily do indicate this; 
 for in such cases we put together sentences, and sentences 
 invariably represent, if not physical, at least mental, pro- 
 cesses, the subject, as a rule, indicating the beginning of 
 them, the predicate the continuation of them, and the 
 object, if there be one, the end of them. In fact, all the 
 different grammatical parts of speech and modifications of 
 them, viewed in one light, are merely methods of repre- 
 senting dependencies and relationships of different parts 
 of whole processes, which, with more or less completeness, 
 are represented by the sentences. — Poetry as a Representa- 
 tive Art, XVI. 
 
 REPRESENTATION IN SOUND AND SIGHT IN DIFFERENT 
 COUNTRIES. 
 
 It is true that it is said of the melodies of speech, as 
 well as of the movements of gesture, such as are considered 
 in the present volume, that their significance differs in 
 different countries. But those who say this, as some 
 have done, imagining the statement, however true, to 
 involve a refutation of any principle advanced in this 
 series of essays, merely show how superficially they have 
 read them. As appUed to music, for instance, such a 
 statement is not made with reference to time, force, or 
 volume — only with reference to pitch, as used in the 
 inflections. But in " Rhythm and Harmony," pages 265 
 to 267, it is very carefully shown that the inflection is not 
 representative of the phraseology but of the motive ex- 
 pressed in the phraseology, many instances being cited in 
 which precisely the same phrases are rightly uttered with 
 exactly opposite inflections. This being understood, the 
 objection mentioned falls to the ground. When, for 
 
312 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 instance, for reasons which the reference just given will 
 indicate, an American says to you at the table, "Will you 
 please pass me the bread?'* with a rising inflection on 
 the last word, what is uppermost in his mind is to indi- 
 cate his acknowledgment that your action in the matter 
 is questionable ; and that he leaves it open for you to do 
 as you choose. But when an Englishman asks the same 
 question, as he almost invariably does, with a falling 
 inflection, what is uppermost in his mind is to make an 
 assertion with reference to his wishes, and to indicate, as, 
 in other matters, he is apt to do to such an extent as to 
 seem, at times, slightly dictatorial, that it is not open for 
 you to differ from him in thinking that, if you are a gentle- 
 man, you are expected to do as he — gently — bids you. 
 People of Southern Europe, even Irishmen, sometimes 
 end what seem positive assertions with an upward turn 
 of the voice. But they are not positive assertions. They 
 are grammatical forms of assertion as uttered by men 
 with habits acquired by being constantly contradicted, 
 or, at least, obliged to subordinate their own views to 
 those of others, who alone are supposed to have a right 
 to speak with authority. Of course, such methods of 
 intonation, once acquired, may be continued from father 
 to son by imitation. But despite the tendency to this 
 latter, they usually cease to be continued after social and 
 religious conditions change. One generation of residence 
 in America will train any foreigner, whatever his language, 
 to express his decided sentiments just as in his own land 
 his own babe, before learning to imitate, invariably does, 
 without any such questionable suggestion. Again a 
 Bedouin will beckon you toward himself with a quick 
 movement of his hand, the palm of which is not turned 
 up, as with us, but down. What does this form of gesture 
 mean? Very clearly, that the Bedouin, while he wishes 
 you nearer himself, is not opening his whole heart to you, 
 or asking you to occupy a position on a social or sympathetic 
 level with himself. On the contrary, unconsciously, per- 
 haps, he is on his guard against you and intends to keep 
 you in a safe and proper place. ... In fact, the character 
 of his gesture affords an almost positive proof of the hostile 
 nature of those with whom he and his fathers have for 
 years been accustomed to associate. — Painting, Sculpture, 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, Preface. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 313 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN ART, THEIR GENESIS (see also 
 EXPRESSION DEVELOPED FROM POSTURES AND GESTURES). 
 
 All forms of expression possible to art of the highest 
 rank are developments of a man's use, for this purpose, of 
 his vocal organs and of his hands. This statement at once 
 suggests an inquiry into the methods through which vocal 
 organs and hands can be made to express, or represent, 
 thoughts and emotions. Evidently, only after we have 
 ascertained this, can we be prepared to understand how the 
 same can be expressed in the arts developed from these 
 methods. — Essentials of Esthetics, xii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN ARTS OF HEARING (see olsO 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF PITCH and OF TONES). 
 
 On comparing the accented and unaccented syllables of 
 words like barbarous, murmuring, tartarize, Singsing, and 
 papa, we can clearly detect four elements. The accented 
 syllable differs slightly from the unaccented — first, in 
 duration: it is sounded in longer time; second, in force: it is 
 sounded with more energy; third, in pitch: it is sounded on a 
 key that, if used in music, would be relatively higher or 
 lower in the musical scale; and fourth, in quality: it is 
 sounded with more fulness or sharpness of tone. . . — 
 Poetry as a Representative Art, iii. 
 
 With reference to the significance of these elements, 
 while it is true that all, in a general way, represent, as has 
 been said, emotive effects, all of them represent also certain 
 peculiar phases of such effects. ... In discoursive elocu- 
 tion, duration measures the utterance — that is, it represents 
 the mind's measurement of its ideas, — one indication, by the 
 way, of the appropriateness of the poetic term, meters, or 
 measures, which result from giving different kinds of dura- 
 tion to syllables; force energizes utterance; pitch aims it; 
 and quality tempers it. Of the last three, again, force 
 imparts physique to delivery; pitch, intellectuality, and 
 quality, emotion or soul, by which, as has been explained, is 
 meant that balancing and blending of physical and intel- 
 lectual tendencies which manifest the degree in which the 
 man is master or slave of body or mind. — Idem, iii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN ARTS OF SIGHT. 
 
 It will be observed also . . . that each particular effect 
 in the elements of sight, as in those of sound, is representa- 
 tive; and that it is so because of an application of the 
 
314 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 principle either of association or of comparison; or, some- 
 times, as is frequently the case, of both of these together. 
 . . . We shall find, as applied to the representation of mind 
 — as distinguished from the representation of external 
 phenomena, which, being mainly imitative, usually inter- 
 prets itself — that the degree of extension or the size indicates 
 what the artist conceives to be — and, therefore, uses to 
 express — the degree of material and, in this sense, physical 
 influence; whereas the other effects indicate what he con- 
 ceives to be — and, therefore, uses to express — the degree of 
 mental influence. Of these effects, touch or handling, as 
 manifested in the relative strength, gradation, or regularity 
 of lines or their shading, naturally suggests the relative 
 expenditure of will-power. Pitch, as manifested in the 
 relative brightness either of hues or of the light that is in 
 them, naturally suggests the mental motive, a brilliant color 
 attracting the attention and a dull color doing the oppo- 
 site; and quality, as manifested in the relative purity or 
 mixture of hues, as in blues or reds as contrasted with 
 grays or browns, naturally suggests the mental feeling. 
 Thus we may say that extension measures, touch energizes, 
 the degree of color aims, and the quality of color tempers 
 the appearance; that the first determines the scope of 
 influence; the second, the degree of executive force; the 
 third, of intellection; and the fourth, of emotion or soul. 
 — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative 
 Arts, II. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN DURATION 
 
 What is indicated by fast time, and by vslow time ? Evi- 
 dently these, respectively, imitate effects in nature that 
 move rapidly and slowly. In addition to this, by way of 
 association, rapidity is indicative of moods that are joyous 
 or mirthful; or, as applied to special thoughts or feelings, 
 of such as seem deserving of only brief consideration because 
 they are light or trifling. Slowness, on the contrary, is 
 indicative of grave and serious moods, of thoughts and 
 feelings worthy of long consideration; therefore, of moods 
 of dignity and importance. In other words, duration repre- 
 sents the mental estimate, or degree of valuation. What has 
 been said hardly needs illustration. Every one can recall 
 the general difference in rapidity between ordinary dance- 
 music, as it is termed, and church music ; or between a horn- 
 pipe and a hymn; and he knows, too, that this difference is 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 315 
 
 determined not alone by the necessity of conforming the 
 music to actual outward movements, as in the dance, but 
 also by the fact that the dance and the hornpipe represent, 
 by way of association, joyous, mirthful, light, trifling moods, 
 and that the church music and the hymn represent the 
 opposite. . . . Precisely the same principles are fulfilled 
 in poetry. — Idem, xii. 
 
 It is evident that in elocution duration may be short 
 or long, or both; in the latter case making possible all 
 the artistic developments of metre. Both experience and 
 reflection show us that in the degree in which utterances 
 are instinctive, as they are when under the influence of 
 mere spontaneity, they find expression in short duration, 
 or — what is the same thing — in fast time. But when one 
 becomes conscious of surrounding influences to which he 
 must conform his phraseology, these put him into a reflective 
 mood, and under the sway of his impressions, he stops to 
 think — sometimes to think twice — of what he is to say, 
 and so uses slow time; or, to look at the subject from a 
 different view-point, a speaker, when not desirous of 
 conveying to others the impression that what he is saying 
 demands their serious consideration, may talk rapidly. 
 But when he wishes to convey the opposite impression — 
 that they should weigh his statements with the utmost 
 care, — he talks slowly. — Poetry as a Representative Art, iv. 
 
 In elocution, quantity may sometimes be prolonged at 
 will; in poetry, it is usually determined by the letter-sounds 
 forming the syllable. The rule is, that syllables composed 
 of short vowel-sounds, and of consonant-sounds easy to 
 pronounce, are short. ... A predominance of these short 
 sounds in the style fits it to represent comparatively un- 
 important ideas, . . . and, also, things that move rapidly, 
 
 A predominance, on the contrary, of decidedly long 
 vowel-sounds, or of consonant-sounds difficult to pro- 
 nounce, makes the rhythm move slowly, and fits it, there- 
 fore, according to the principles already unfolded, to 
 represent important ideas, . . . and, also, things that move 
 slowly. — Idem, iii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN EXTENSION {sCC also EMOTION 
 
 OR soul). 
 
 Not only in painting and sculpture, but in architecture 
 also, relatively large and small extension, corresponding 
 
3i6 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 in this regard to relatively long and short duration, have 
 inevitable representative effects. Either by way of associa- 
 tion or of comparison, or of both, they respectively indicate 
 what is heavy, strong, substantial, immovable, important, 
 influential, dignified, near, on the one hand; or else, on the 
 other hand, what is light, weak, unsubstantial, movable, 
 unimportant, uninfluential, undignified, remote. It is this 
 principle that causes us, when looking at objects, to think 
 more of a statue than of a doll, more of a cathedral than of a 
 cottage, more of the fingers on a statue than of the fringe on 
 which, perhaps, they rest, and more of the towers and 
 domes of a building than of its chimneys and ventilators. 
 The same principle applied in connection with the natural 
 laws of perspective, causes us to give more consideration 
 to the full-sized figures in the foreground of a painting 
 than to the minute objects in its background. If the 
 picture be designed to interest us in animals, this fact is 
 represented by large size that brings them to the front; 
 if in a pasture in which they are feeding, by small size 
 that sends them to the rear. Overbalancing foliage, with 
 a cherub's face just visible in it, emphasizes the prodigality 
 of inanimate nature. A full-sized statue, with a few 
 flowers about it, emphazies the preeminence of man. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative 
 Arts, III. 
 
 Huge stones in a doorway, or huge pillars in a porch 
 having heavy masonry above them, are so evidently neces- 
 sary in order to afford the needed physical support, that it 
 seems as if the builder must have chosen them instinctively 
 rather than reflectively. But the light steel rods and bars 
 in suspension or cantilever bridges are so evidently indica- 
 tive of the results of experiment and contrivance, that we 
 cannot avoid the impression that they were determined 
 upon as the result of reflection. Often, however, the heavy 
 doorway or column may be so carefully carved, so minutely 
 divided by outlines into all sorts of details of shape, that it 
 suggests not only the physical but also the mental, not only 
 the instinctive but also the reflective; and it is then that, in 
 accordance with what was said on page ii, we have that 
 emotive manifestation universally attributed to that artistic 
 development of the technicalities of building which we term 
 architecture. — Idem, ii. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 317 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN FORCE, ACCENT, LIGHT AND 
 SHADE, ETC. 
 
 The next rhythmical element of expression to be con- 
 sidered, is force. This is to sounds what different degrees 
 of light and shade are to objects of sight; and is essential 
 to the effects of rhythm in the same way that shading is to 
 those of proportion. In elocution, no one in feeble physical 
 health can manifest an excess of force, while, at times, 
 without it, his delivery may be characterized by the greatest 
 amount of intelligence and soul, of thought and the emo- 
 tion that is connected with thought. For these reasons, it 
 seems right to infer that force represents physique rather 
 than intellect or spiritual feeling ; in other words, energy that 
 is instinctive and connected with the physical nature rather 
 than anything that is reflective and connected with the psy- 
 chical. — Poetry as a Representative Art, v. 
 
 In the arts of sound, especially in poetry, the effects of 
 force and pitch usually go together. If, in a poetic foot, we 
 accent one syllable, we almost invariably give it a different 
 pitch from that of the unaccented syllable following it. 
 There is the same connection between the corresponding 
 elements in the arts of sight. When we give more force 
 to a color in painting by increasing the effects of light and 
 shade, we usually change the kind, or, what may be termed 
 the pitch, of the color; and though certain buildings and 
 statues seem to be devoid of color, we cannot, except by 
 using many different kinds of it, make pictures which will 
 reproduce with absolute accuracy such effects as have just 
 been attributed to relative degrees of massiveness or of 
 energy of touch. — Essentials of Msthetics, xiii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN GESTURES OF THE ARM. 
 
 There are three planes in which the stroke of a gesture 
 may be made. One is on a level with the breast, which is 
 the seat of the motive or emotive nature, or, as we may say 
 (see page 12), of the soul. One is below it, and one is above 
 it. The principle underlying the phase of thought repre- 
 sented by the hand, when carried to either of the three 
 planes, is as follows: Every soul inside of a body con- 
 ceives of itself as the centre of the universe, which the 
 horizon rims, the earth grounds, and the zenith domes. 
 Every man, even the least egotistic, is compelled to think 
 that not only the world but the universe revolves around 
 
3i« AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 himself. Perhaps he is right — who knows? If God be 
 really in that fourth dimension within us, and the human 
 soul be really a focus in which the rays from earth and 
 heaven meet and blend, how far is this from the truth? 
 But whether right or wrong, a man cannot rid himself of 
 this conception. When he gestures, he cannot do other- 
 wise than give expression to it. His hands are carried on 
 a level with the breast to represent what he conceives to 
 be on a physical, and hence, by analogy, a mental or 
 moral level with himself. They move before him to indi- 
 cate that which he really sees there, or to refer ideally to 
 the truth or hope that he anticipates in the future. They 
 move behind him to indicate that which is really behind 
 him, something that he has abandoned or turned from 
 possibly with loathing or regret; or they may refer ideally 
 to a condition of opinion and life beyond which he has 
 progressed. They move to one side to refer to some actual 
 physical presence there, or, ideally, if the gesture indicate 
 exclusion, to something that is a side issue from the 
 main line of thought; possibly to some course that is a 
 diversion from straightforward action. But if the gesture 
 indicate inclusion, it refers to the general and compre- 
 hensive. The hands are carried below the breast to repre- 
 sent that which one conceives to be physically, mentally, 
 or morally below himself; i. e., below his sight, compre- 
 hension, or control; to indicate a pathway, an idea that he 
 can understand, a power that he can master. They are 
 carried above the breast to represent that which he conceives 
 to be physically, mentally, or morally above himself; 
 above his sight, conception, or control; to indicate a star, 
 a grand idea, a mighty force. 
 
 In applying these principles, it must always be borne in 
 mind that the different directions taken by the gesture repre- 
 sent not what actually is, but what a man conceives to 
 be. Most of the published discussions of this subject do not 
 sufficiently emphasize this fact. We are told, for instance, 
 that good and God must receive upward gestures, and 
 bad and the Devil downward gestures. But this depends 
 entirely upon one's point of view, upon his conception. 
 The expression, "Get thee behind me, Satan," would 
 require a downward and backward gesture, because the 
 speaker would conceive of Satan as below and behind him- 
 self morally ; but the expression — 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 319 
 
 There was a Brutus once that would have brooked 
 The Eternal Devil to keep his state in Rome 
 As easily as a king — 
 
 Shakespeare: Julius CcBsar^ *., 2 — 
 
 would require an upward and forward gesture, because in 
 it Satan is conceived of as a foe of overwhelming force, 
 whom one is facing, therefore as one physically above and 
 before the speaker, and not by any means below or behind 
 him. — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative 
 Arts, IX. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN GESTURES OF THE HAND. 
 
 The first, the broadest, roundest form that the hand can 
 assume, represents, as nearly as any shape possible for it, 
 vital and physical emphasis, i. e., will-power applied to the 
 impression of ideas. Just as a fist threatens with a power 
 greater than one's own, if held above one's head; and with 
 one's own power, if held on a level with one's breast, so it 
 manifests strength of conviction and a determination to 
 pound the truth into an opponent, if made in connection 
 with a downward gesture of emphasis. 
 
 Equally evident is the meaning of the pointing finger. 
 It is the sharpest form that the hand can assume, and, 
 according to what has been said, should represent inter- 
 pretive mentality. This it undoubtedly does. When we 
 point to an object, we do so not as an exhibition of will 
 or emotion, but of thought. Nor do we wish others to do 
 anything beyond concentrating their thought upon it. 
 There are two forms of the gesture with the fingers and 
 thumb unfolded from the palm . . . namely, the closing, 
 in which the palm is averted, i. e., turned away from the 
 body, where the speaker cannot see it, and the opening, in 
 which the position is reversed, where the palm is held so that 
 the speaker can see it. The closing gesture seems to push 
 downward, upward, backward, forward, or sideward, as 
 if to keep all external things or thoughts from touching or 
 influencing the one who is gesturing. It seems to close 
 all channels of communication between him and the outside 
 world. The opening gesture seems prepared to give and 
 receive things or thoughts from every quarter; and thus to 
 open these channels. Both gestures, therefore, seem to 
 represent the motive or emotive attitude. To extend what 
 has been said, the closing gesture being used to reject, to 
 ward off, to deny, what is unpleasant, threatening, or un- 
 
320 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 truthful is used descriptively to refer to anything having 
 these characteristics, to anything, therefore, like a storm, 
 an avalanche, a disgusting sight, a foe, or any supposed 
 source of plotting or hostility. For an analogous reason, 
 as applied to abstract thought, this gesture is used by one 
 who is in a mood to dogmatize, to dictate, or to express any 
 conception, concerning which he is not in a condition to 
 receive suggestions from others. . . . The youngest child 
 never points with the palm up to things that have definite 
 outlines. The palm is always down. It is not an open 
 question how one shall conceive of a particular horse or 
 dog; and so the closing gesture with the index finger shuts 
 out all appeal. The mind of the speaker cannot be satisfied 
 unless the hearer conceives of these objects just as he 
 does. . . . 
 
 The opening gesture indicates exactly the opposite. 
 Being used to welcome or impart what is pleasant, interest- 
 ing, or important, it naturally refers, in a descriptive 
 way, to any thing or thought having these characteristics, 
 to anything conceived of, therefore, as being freely given 
 or received like a gift or purchase, or like friendship, joy, 
 knowledge, prosperity, or blessedness. As accompanying 
 an expression of abstract thought, this gesture is in place 
 whenever one submits an opinion as an open question for 
 others to consider and to decide as they may deem fit. It 
 is the gesture, therefore, of inquiry, persuasion, and appeal. 
 The pointing finger, too, when the palm is in the position 
 of an opening gesture, does not mean the same as when it is 
 in the position of the closing gesture. In the former case 
 it does not point merely to definite objects; it points to open 
 possibilities. — Essentials of JEsthetics, xiii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN HUMAN FORMS. 
 
 After cautioning the reader to bear in mind that few 
 individual forms manifest the features of any one type 
 exclusively, it will suffice to say that, according to the prin- 
 ciples of physiology and phrenology, roundness of form or 
 feature, i. e., curvature, represents the degree of vital or 
 physical power; that sharpness, i. e., angularity, represents 
 the degree of mental or interpretive power ; and that length 
 represents the degree of motive or emotive power, i. e. 
 the degree of that self-control or lack of it which is some- 
 times termed moral power. ... If we separate the sugges- 
 
'* The Descent from the Cross," by Rubens 
 See pages, 73, 82, 88, 89, gi, 162, 331, 385 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 321 
 
 tions of different parts of the body, the torso seems best to 
 represent the vital or physical; the extremities, especially 
 the head and hands, to represent the mental or interpretive, 
 as, for instance, in the hand-gesture; and the chest, shoulders, 
 elbows, and knees, to represent the motive or emotive, as, 
 for instance, when one is excited or embarrassed. Facial 
 expression seems based upon the principle that the chin 
 and lower lip best represent the vital or physical; the eye- 
 brows and forehead best represent the mental or inter- 
 pretive; and the nose and eyes best represent the motive 
 or emotive. The movements of these features to repre- 
 sent particular conceptions correspond, when the head 
 is lifted or lowered or turned sideways, to the arms; and 
 when the countenance is contracted, expanded, or drawn 
 down, to the hands. — Idem, xiii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN HUMAN POSTURES. 
 
 Now let us consider, as related to representation, the 
 action of a man's body. We shall find that, in the degree 
 in which his expression is instinctive in the sense of being 
 spontaneous and unconscious, because uninfluenced or 
 unimpeded by conditions that come from without, his gait, 
 postures, and gestures all tend to assume the forms of free, 
 large, graceful curves. But in the degree in which his 
 expression is reflective, in the sense of being made responsive 
 and calculating in order to meet conditions from without, 
 especially in the degree in which these conditions check, 
 impede, and embarrass him, and make him conscious of 
 this fact, or self-conscious, as we say, — in this degree we 
 shall find that his bearing is stiff, constrained, and awkward, 
 imparting to all his movements a tendency to assume the 
 forms of straight lines and angles. Both these extremes 
 are emotive, as is all human expression; but sharp angles and 
 short curves will give way to straighter lines and longer 
 curves in the degree in which outside conditions do not 
 wholly overcome a man's spontaneity, but cause him to 
 make his instinctive promptings reflective, as in exerting 
 the moral influence of confident assertion, or enthusiastic 
 persuasion. But angles will predominate in the degree 
 in which he is conscious of interference, as in supposed 
 opposition, whether this be mental, or material or both 
 together, as in fighting. The latter condition will double 
 up his frame and throw his neck, elbows, knees, and hips 
 
 2X 
 
322 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 into shapes that will make his form the best possible repre- 
 sentation of what can be described by only the term angu- 
 larity; yet from this appearance in such cases, curves are 
 never entirely absent. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN NATURAL OUTLINES. 
 
 So much for the meaning of outlines assumed by the 
 body. Now let us notice how, as manifested not in the 
 human form but in the inanimate appearances of nature 
 surrounding it, similar outlines are fitted to represent, and 
 so to awaken, corresponding conceptions in the mind of the 
 spectator. The curve has been ascribed to the instinctive, 
 or, as we may term it, the physically normal action of the 
 human form. Is there any truth in the supposition that 
 similar appearances external to man may be ascribed to 
 sources similar in character? Why should there not be? 
 The eye itself is circular, and the field of vision which it 
 views, at any one moment, always appears to be the same. 
 So does the horizon and the zenith, and so, too, do most of the 
 objects that they contain — the heaving mountain, the rising 
 smoke or vapor, the rolling wave, the gushing fountain, the 
 rippling stream, even the bubbles of its water and the 
 pebbles of its channel, and everj'- tree, plant, and animal, 
 whether at rest or in motion. For this reason, curves, 
 wherever seen, necessarily suggest more or less of that 
 which is normal, or, as applied to natural animate life, of 
 that which has the buoyancy, freedom, and joyousness 
 which we instinctively associate with the possession of this. 
 
 The straight line with its accompanying angles we have 
 found to be produced by a man chiefly as a result of the 
 reflective action of his mind. How is it with similar effects 
 in the appearances surrounding him? Do not rectangles 
 with their straight, parallel sides, as in buildings and in so 
 many other objects made by men, invariably suggest 
 results of construction, and, therefore, of reflection expended 
 upon them? Nor are such suggestions confined to objects 
 with reference to which a man's interference with the 
 normal action of nature is unmistakable. By way of 
 association, the horizontal hilltop, the sharply perpendicular 
 cliff, the pointed peak, cause us to think and often to say 
 that they look precisely as if a man had been at work upon 
 them, leveling or blasting. Few natural objects, indeed, 
 have outlines absolutely straight or angular; but always, in 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 323 
 
 the degree in which they are so, the impression naturally 
 produced by curves, which is that of a growth outward 
 from normal vitality within, is lessened. We feel that life 
 has in some way been literally blasted. As a rule, it is the 
 great convulsions of nature, whether produced by fire, frost, 
 wind, or earthquake, that leave behind them, if their pro- 
 gress can be traced at all, such results of crystallizing, 
 cracking, and rending, as are manifested in straight lines 
 and angles. No wonder, therefore, that wherever seen they 
 are associated in our minds with the work of extraneous force 
 acting upon the forms from the outside, as the volcano does 
 when it rends the rocks and throws the lava through and 
 over them, and as the tempest does, when it bends the trees 
 and tears off their branches. 
 
 Now let us consider the possibilities of emotive effects 
 between these two extremes of form. When, notwith- 
 standing curves or angles, the general appearance of a 
 shape approximates that of straight, parallel lines, it must 
 be then that the appearance is most suggestive of reflective 
 influences. This being so, in the degree in which the lines 
 are long and absolutely straight, they must suggest reflec- 
 tion or thought of the most unchanging as well as distinctive 
 character, as in persistence, seriousness, or dignity. Now 
 notice that these straight lines may tend to be either hori- 
 zontal or vertical. Does it require any argument to show 
 that, if horizontal, they are suggestive of persistence, 
 seriousness, or dignity in repose, and, if vertical, of the same 
 in activity. What is so firmly fixed in position as a long 
 straight beam, lying fiat on the ground ; and what is so hard 
 to get or easy to keep in position as the same placed verti- 
 cally? It is strictly in accordance with the principle of 
 correspondence, therefore, that the former should represent 
 restfulness, and the latter difficulty overcome by effort, 
 and, if through human agency, by human effort, or by that 
 in the soul which makes the effort possible. For this 
 reason, therefore, as well as because, by pointing upward, 
 it carries the thought upward (which is the ordinary way 
 of explaining the effect), the vertical line may be said to 
 represent aspiration and elevation of aim. Of course, too, 
 because composed of lines very nearly vertical, sharp angles 
 pointing upward, as in Gothic window-caps and spires, 
 represent the same. Observe, too, how in this architectural 
 style the parallelism of the vertical lines repeats and em- 
 
324 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 phasizes the emotive effect due to their directions, and 
 augments it by regularity. 
 
 Curves and angles, when their lines are greatly broken, 
 suggest the changing and transient, and also, when crossed, 
 the complex. Because complex, they are perplexing; and 
 provided they are nevertheless disposed in such ways as 
 to render the fact of some design indisputable, they are 
 exciting, as far as lines can be so, to the imagination, con- 
 stantly stimulating it, as they do, to solve the mystery of 
 their mode of arrangement. Such being their effects, one 
 would expect to find the natural forms characterized by 
 them proving more exciting to the emotions than those 
 already considered. And when we examine the appear- 
 ances about us, is not this exactly what we do find? Is 
 it not when complicated curves and angles outline natural 
 trifles that they fascinate and make men imitate them in 
 their curios? Is it not when curves, straight lines, and 
 angles join in natural forms of grander import, when the 
 tree and bush are wreathed about the precipice, when 
 the dome-like mountain and the rolling cloud lift above 
 the sharp peak and cloven crag, and far below them lies the 
 flat plain or lake, — is it not then, in connection with such 
 combinations, that the most exciting appeal is made through 
 the emotions to the imagination ? 
 
 That the facts are as here suggested, will be evident to 
 any one who will make a careful study of the subtle effects 
 upon the mind of different scenes in nature, and of the 
 imitations of them in art. In this place a good way, 
 perhaps, of discovering the representative capabilities of 
 these different appearances, is to recall the use that is made 
 of them by the landscape gardener. Is it not a fact that, 
 in case he desire to direct attention to the beauty of nature in 
 itself, i. e., to the capabilities of nature with the least possible 
 suggestion of the intervention of a human mind, — that in 
 this case his plans will develop into gradually rising mounds 
 and circuitous drives, winding among trees and shrubs 
 planted in clusters but not in rows? On the contrary, if he 
 desire to produce a distinctly different impression, causing 
 thought to revert from nature to man, either to the artist 
 who has arranged things as they are, or to the resident or 
 visitor for whose convenience or guidance they have been 
 so arranged, then will he not plan for distinctly different 
 effects, as in the long avenue bordered with its rows of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 325 
 
 trees, or in the terrace, or the hedge, or the flower garden 
 with straight and rectangular pathways? Or, once more, if 
 he desire to produce more emotional impressions by means 
 of which the observer may be drawn more into sympathy 
 with his designs and the ingenuity of them, will he not 
 make more use of variety and contrast, combining the 
 winding walks of the ramble with sharp angles, perpen- 
 dicular rocks with rounded moss banks, or shooting cata- 
 racts with still pools? 
 
 Is it strange that similar principles should apply to 
 painting and sculpture? They are equally applicable 
 when constructing buildings. The most ordinarily accepted 
 classification made of the different styles of these is accord- 
 ing to their bridging of openings or spaces by straight lines, 
 curves, or angles, which three methods are supposed to 
 indicate the differences between the architecture of the 
 Greek horizontal entablature, of the Byzantine or Roman- 
 esque round arch, and of the Gothic pointed arch. But 
 notice that straight lines abound in all these forms, the 
 horizontal ones in Greek architecture being no more promi- 
 nent than the vertical ones in Gothic architecture. It is 
 well to observe, too, that of all architecture appealing to 
 the emotions the latter does this in the most powerfully 
 effective way, for the reason not often noticed that in it 
 alone is it possible to blend all the possibilities of outline. 
 Sometimes there are no curved forms at all in Greek build- 
 ings. Sometimes, too, there are no sharp forms in Byzan- 
 tine or the allied Romanesque buildings. But in Gothic 
 buildings there is invariably a blending of both. More- 
 over, as if also to emphasize the existence of each, both are 
 developed to excess, the curves being made particularly 
 round and the angles particularly sharp. 
 
 Now what is the architectural significance of a predomi- 
 nance of each of these methods of bringing outlines to- 
 gether, namely, through curves, through angles, or through 
 both in combination? Is this difficult to determine? To 
 begin with, what is the shape most instinctively produced 
 by the creatures below man, when they indulge in con- 
 struction? What is the shape of ant-hills, birds* nests, or 
 beavers* dams? What is the shape of that which a man 
 constructs in the forest when he breaks off the limbs of 
 the trees, and, binding them together, builds himself 
 something in which to sleep? Rounded, curved, is it not? 
 
326 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 The huts represented in Chapter XX. of this book are all 
 symmetrical, and so would be recognized at once as pro- 
 ducts of man; but which of them should we be most likely 
 to imagine to have been constructed by some more intelli- 
 gent animal? .... The same principle holds good with 
 reference to buildings of a more elaborate character; 
 though it must not be overlooked that, in the degree in 
 which any forms are artificially elaborated they come to 
 have complex and therefore (see page ii) stronger emotive 
 effects. But, as applied to the predominating or germinal 
 shapes in such buildings, is it not true that the impression 
 conveyed by any rounded arch, as in a bridge for instance, 
 is that the small stones available have been made to span 
 the space under it in accordance with a natural law which 
 needs only to be perceived by the builder in order to be 
 instinctively fulfilled by him? And if this be so, is it not 
 logical to infer that all such forms can cause one to asso- 
 ciate their appearance with a fulfilment of natural law? 
 Do not their curved outlines make Figs. 40 and 43 look as 
 if, according to natural law, they grew into shape in a sense 
 not true of Fig. 42? Possibly, therefore, there is a reason 
 why rounded doorways and bending domes should have 
 seemed to so many in so many different lands appropriate 
 to represent not only, as stated on page 38, a place in which 
 crowds are expected to gather, but also a centre from which 
 emanates the authority of law, either civil, as from a state 
 capitol or courthouse, or spiritual, as from a cathedral. 
 
 Again when we find buildings showing no such desire 
 to accommodate the methods of construction to the re- 
 quirements of natural law, as is apparent in the round 
 arch, but rather a determination, on the part of a man, to 
 erect something designed by himself without any special 
 regard for these requirements, as is the case wherever we 
 see a predominance of straight lines and angles, then is it 
 not true that the impression mainly conveyed is that of a 
 form due to human reflection ? Moreover, if, in connection 
 with this general impression, the predominating lines be 
 horizontal, and the angles flat, so as to produce, so far as 
 angles can, an effect of horizontality, is it not true that, 
 combined with the seriousness and dignity suggested by 
 straight lines, they represent repose? ... If, on the con- 
 trary, the predominating lines be vertical, and the angles, 
 by being sharp, aid the effect of verticality, is it not true 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 327 
 
 that, "combined with the seriousness and dignity suggested 
 by straight lines, they represent elevation of soul or aspira- 
 tion? 
 
 Once more, when we look at buildings in which the 
 curves as well as straight lines are prominent, or in which 
 curves, straight lines, and angles, all three, are prominent, 
 can we not perceive a more aesthetic emotive effect than in a 
 building in which the curves are greatly subordinated? 
 And in buildings in which either curves, angles, or straight 
 lines are combined in excess of what are needed, as is often 
 the case in both Greek and Gothic architecture, where 
 columns, entablatures, or arches, are introduced and are all 
 shaped alike evidently for the purpose of ornament alone, 
 and to enhance, by way of correspondence, the appearance 
 of artistic unity, then is it not true that the forms represent 
 a special appeal to the aesthetic emotions? — Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, v. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF COLOR AS INFLUENCED BY 
 
 LIGHT (^see also color as perceived by the eye 
 and HARMONY OF color). 
 Let us notice now the representative possibilities of color. 
 We can best come to understand these by considering what 
 color represents in extreme cases. When there is no light 
 there is no color. When there is little light, we can see 
 forms, but not colors, except as they seem to be very dim 
 and dark. In this condition, the mind is not greatly inter- 
 ested in them nor aroused to thought by them ; so far as they 
 affect the appearance of nature, they are not, as a rule, 
 satisfactory, interesting, cheering, or inspiring, but, on 
 the contrary, they sometimes cause depression and even 
 solicitude. With more light, however, the outlines and 
 colors become more visible, bright, and varied; and not 
 only the satisfaction but the excitation derivable from 
 them is increased? These effects continue to be enhanced 
 up to the time, if it ever arrive, when the colors are no 
 longer distinguishable, for the reason that the light has 
 become too dazzling. But at this point the disagree- 
 ableness of the effect is produced, not because attention 
 is aroused too slightly, but too greatly, as, for instance, 
 by the direct rays of the sun or by a flash of lightning. In 
 all cases, however, even in these last, notice the additional 
 excitation to the emotions produced by variety. Sunlight 
 
328 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 or lightning is never so vivid as when made to contrast 
 sharply with absolute darkness, as in a cave or a cloud. 
 Nor is a bright red or yellow ever so effective as when 
 placed directly against a dull blue-green or indigo. We 
 may say, therefore, that, as a rule, dark colors — or shades 
 of them which result when the colors as determined by the 
 spectrum, are mixed with black — as also unvarying colors, 
 are less exciting to the emotions than are bright and varied 
 ones. — Essentials of /Esthetics, xiii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF COLORS (sce olso REPRESENTA- 
 TIVE EFFECTS OF TONES). 
 
 For the purpose not merely of indicating the unity of 
 method in different parts of this system, but also for the 
 purpose of accomplishing that for which this unity of 
 method is intended to be serviceable, it seems well in this 
 place to try to interpret the meanings of the colors through 
 what we know of the meanings of the different elocutionary, 
 musical, or poetic tones. Of these tones, the normal and 
 orotund are musical and unmixed. It will be shown pres- 
 ently that the two, respectively, correspond to the cold 
 and the warm colors. . . . 
 
 We will take up, first, the distinction between the 
 normal — sometimes called the pure — tone and the oro- 
 tund. In elocution, the former is not necessarily a culti- 
 vated tone, but the latter, the orotund, is. The former 
 therefore suggests the natural, and the latter the artistic. 
 Is not the same true with reference to the classes of color 
 to which these have been said to correspond? Just as 
 the normal tone is that of ordinary natural intercourse, 
 are not the cold colors, the greens, blues, and purples, 
 those of ordinary natural life? Is it not true that for 
 nine-tenths of all the time, nine-tenths of all the surfaces 
 of the globe — i. e., the lakes, skies, hills, forests, fields, 
 rocks, distant and near — are robed in these colors? The 
 warmer colors, the reds, oranges, and yellows, appear 
 occasionally in nature in the sunset sky, the autumn foliage, 
 the hues of flowers, the plumage of birds, and the coating 
 of animals; but it is remarkable how seldom they appear 
 at all, how little surface, comparatively, they cover when 
 they do appear, how infrequently they appear in their 
 full intensity, and how universally, when they do appear 
 in this, they are considered exceptional and worthy of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 329 
 
 remark. They certainly are not nature's normal colors. 
 Man cannot dye anything bluer or greener than he can 
 often see in the sea and sky and forest; but nowhere 
 in the world can he raise a red or orange flag that will 
 not instantly be recognized as something different from 
 anything in nature, and, therefore, as something that is 
 signaling the presence of man. Hence the use of these 
 colors, especially of red, by surveying parties, and on 
 railways, piers, and battle-fields. Such colors are the 
 ones that are most suggestive of human interference. As 
 used in art, therefore, they are the colors representing the 
 condition upon which the thought and feeling of the artist 
 have had the greatest influence. 
 
 With these facts, however, we need also to bear in mind 
 that which is a logical inference from what was said on 
 page 254, namely, that all very low and uniform shades, 
 even if of yellows, oranges, and reds, have a quieting 
 effect, and all very high and — because contrasts emphasize 
 one another, and most contrasts of cold colors are warm 
 — all contrasting tints, even if of purples, blues, and greens, 
 have an exciting effect. To compare these conditions 
 with those of pitch in elocution and music, this, if low and 
 monotonous, indicates what is serious, grave, dignified, 
 and self-controlled, and, if high and varied, the opposite. 
 Does it require an argument to show how perfectly these 
 analogies are carried out as applied to colors? Do we not 
 all recognize the more exciting and exhilarating effects 
 of these when full of brightness, and also, in connection 
 with this, of contrast? Who has not noticed the difference 
 in influence between a lawn and a fiower-bed? or between 
 a room decorated with evergreens and the same decorated 
 with chrysanthemums? or between a uniformly clouded 
 gray sky, and a sky lighted up with the diversified glories of 
 the sunset? or between the dulness and monotony of a 
 business street when the shop-entrances are hung with 
 dingy clothing for sale, or the sidewalks filled with people 
 in dark business suits, and the same streets when hung with 
 bright and varied flags on a gala day, or crowded with 
 throngs decked out in the gay and checkered trappings of 
 a carnival or holiday parade? Of course, uniformity of 
 color, like uniformity of outline — as in parallelism, — pro- 
 duces a certain seriousness and dignity of effect; and any 
 procession, the members of which are dressed alike and 
 
33© AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 march~alike, will produce something of these irrespective 
 of the quality of the coloring. But there is a vast difference 
 between the degree of seriousness and dignity in the effect 
 of a procession of priests and nuns robed in black or gray in a 
 funeral or at church, and in that of militia uniformed in 
 bright colors on a holiday or in a theatre. In the latter case, 
 it is impossible to conceive that any child, or a crowd of any 
 kind, should require explanation, aside from those suggested 
 by color alone, to arouse them to excitement and enthusi- 
 asm. There was philosophy as well as fancy, therefore, un- 
 derlying the former use of red in the costumes of soldiers. 
 Nothing in the way of color can surpass red in effective- 
 ness. This fact has been explained according to the prin- 
 ciple of association. It has been said that red is the color 
 of blood and of fire, and suggests them. But does it sug- 
 gest them to the bull and other animals whom it excites 
 to fury? In these cases does it not act physically? Physi- 
 cists agree that there is no color that agitates the optic 
 nerve so violently. There seem to be, therefore, just as 
 in the case of outlines, principles both of association and 
 of nature which cause certain colors, and, to a less degree, 
 all colors, when at their brightest, to be representative of 
 emotive excitation, and certain other colors, and, to a less 
 degree, all colors in their lower tones, to be representative 
 of the opposite. 
 
 All the great facts of nature are felt long before they 
 are formulated. When the man born blind expressed his 
 conception of the color red by saying that it was like the 
 sound of a trumpet, he uttered not a poetic but a literal 
 truth. Just as red is the color that is farthest removed 
 from the ordinary colors of nature, the blast of the trum- 
 pet is the sound that is farthest removed from the ordinary 
 sounds of nature. All pastoral symphonies abound in 
 passages executed by the flutes and clarionets, and the 
 violins and other stringed instruments. With the music 
 produced by these, it seems natural to associate the sounds 
 produced by the sighing and whistling of the wind, the 
 rushing and dashing of the waters, and the occasional 
 piping of a bird and the lowing of an animal. The drum and 
 cymbal, too, may remind one of the exceptional thunder 
 of the storm, or the roll of the earthquake. But when the 
 flutes and stringed instruments give way to the trumpet 
 and allied instruments, then we feel that man is asserting 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 33i 
 
 his influence in the scene, and we listen, almost instinc- 
 tively, for the sound of his tramping feet. It is only man 
 that marches. It is only man that wages war, and it is 
 only in martial music and in the expression of the passion 
 of conflict and the pride of triumph that the blasts of the 
 trumpet, announcing, as they do, more distinctively than 
 any other musical sounds, the power and presence of the 
 human being, realize to the full their representative mis- 
 sion. No wonder that even a blind man, at the end of the 
 play, just as the curtain drops on the victorious conquerors, 
 should be able to imagine how there should be an aesthetic 
 connection between the brilliant climax that is heard and 
 the brilliant colors in the costumes and flags which are 
 described to him as surrounding these conquerors and 
 waving above them. 
 
 The same principles must apply, of course, to the sig- 
 nificance of color as used in painting and architecture. 
 In the ordinary portraits of great men, in such paintings 
 as Raphael's "School of Athens," the seriousness and 
 dignity of the subjects are such that we do not feel the 
 need in the pigments of much brightness or contrast. But 
 whenever anything is intended to produce, primarily, a 
 powerful impression, whether gay or grave in tendency, 
 the contrary is sometimes true. Hence one reason why 
 Rubens with his high and varied coloring is so transcen- 
 dency great in such representations of profound excitement 
 as in the "Lion Hunt" and "The Descent from the Cross," 
 and is so correspondingly gross in subjects of a lighter char- 
 acter, as in some of those in the Old Pinakothek at Munich. 
 
 But there is another reason for this fact, and, in connec- 
 tion with it, there is another confirmation of the general 
 truth of the statements just made. It may be recognized 
 by noticing the effects produced by colors upon pictures 
 of the human countenance. So far as this latter is more 
 than a mass of lifeless flesh, so far as it is something fitted 
 to be transfused and transfigured by the seriousness of 
 intelligence and the dignity of spirituality, is there any 
 doubt that it should be represented in colors neither very 
 brilliant nor greatly varied? May there not be a sense in 
 which it is a literal fact that the blue veins of the aristocrat 
 are far more suggestive of sentiment and soul behind them, 
 not only than the bloated flush of the inebriate, but even 
 than the ruddy hues of the peasant ? . . . 
 
332 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 So, too, in sculpture. Is it not universally recognized 
 that statues of dark gray, blue, or black marble, granite, 
 or bronze, as in the case of some of the Egyptian remains, 
 while fitted for subjects presented in proportions suf- 
 ficiently large to secure great seriousness and dignity of 
 effect, are much less appropriate than pure white marble 
 for subjects of the same general character when presented 
 in the proportions of life ? And is it not equally true that 
 subjects of a lighter character and smaller size are far more 
 appropriately represented in the warmer-colored bronzes? 
 
 In architecture, outHne has usually more to do with 
 effects than has color. Yet here, too, few fail to recognize 
 the influence of the latter. Who can be insensible to the 
 congruity between the seriousness, gravity, and dignity 
 of impression produced by blue shades of gray or even of 
 white, as they loom before us in the outlines of the cathedral, 
 or of the large public edifice? But who finds it agreeable 
 to have the same conceptions associated with buildings 
 designed for domestic purposes? Observe how cold, as 
 we very appropriately say, and therefore how devoid of 
 that which is homelike and inviting, is the impression some- 
 times produced by the blue-gray or white of a mansion, as 
 contrasted with the appearance of a house constructed of 
 material in which there is a more liberal admixture of the 
 warm hues, as in stone or brick of a yellow, orange, or brown 
 shade. And what of the warm colors when used with 
 contrasts? Is there any one who is not conscious of the 
 joyous, gay, and exhilarating suggestions imparted by the 
 bright and varied tints that invite one to the pavilion of 
 the park or the veranda of the seaside cottage ? The same 
 principle, of course, is exemplified in interiors. Cold colors 
 on the walls, an exclusive or excessive use of blue, or of 
 green, will always affect the sensitive like the clouds of a 
 lowery day, while the warmer colors, used either wholly or 
 in part, will correspondingly enliven them. No one can 
 deny the impressiveness of the gray of the stone arches 
 that bend over the "dim religious light" of the church. 
 But even the effect of this needs to be counteracted by 
 warm colors in the chancel; and would be wholly out of 
 place in a theatre. — The Essentials of Esthetics, xiii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF COLORS WHEN MIXED. 
 
 Now let us consider the mixed as distinguished from the 
 pure colors. Going back, for a moment, co mixed tones^ 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 333 
 
 the first of them that was mentioned was the aspirate. 
 This, as was said, is a whisper, and its characteristic is an 
 absence of any tone whatever. Of course, that which, in 
 the realm of color, corresponds to an absence of tone 
 must be, according to its degree of intensity, black or 
 white, or else some gray quality formed by mixing the 
 two. The whisper, in its forcible form, the analogue of 
 which, in the realm of sight, would be black, indicates 
 apprehension, as in fright; and in its weaker form, the 
 analogue of which, in the realm of sight, would be white, 
 indicates interest, as in the secrecy of a love-scene. In 
 both forms the whisper adds feeling to the tone, which, as 
 a rule, is usually uttered, if not simultaneously with it, at 
 least before or after it. This tone, of course, considered 
 irrespective of the whisper that is joined with it, must 
 resemble either the normal or the orotund. If it resemble 
 the normal, the forcible whisper causes it to have that pas- 
 sive effect of apprehension characterizing the expressions of 
 awe and horror represented in the mixed quality which 
 is termed pectoral. If the tone resemble the orotund, the 
 forcible whisper causes it to have that active effect of 
 apprehension characterizing the expression of hostility 
 represented in the mixed quality which is termed guttural. 
 
 In the realm of sight, nothing could be perceived if 
 everything were absolutely black. Black, therefore, as 
 well as white, must always be blended with other shades. 
 When blended thus, the effect of being side by side is 
 much the same as of actual mixture. At a slight distance, 
 we cannot tell whether the appearance is owing to the 
 latter or merely to the fact that two shades happen to be 
 near together. Now bearing this in mind we may say 
 that the effect of black, when blended with the cold colors, 
 corresponds to that of pectoral quality, and, when blended 
 with the warm colors, corresponds to that of guttural 
 quality. 
 
 Notice, first, the combinations of black with the cold 
 colors. In such cases the black, of course, must be very 
 prominent, and, merely to render the objects depicted 
 clearly perceptible, it must be offset in some places by 
 cold colors of comparatively light tints. But where light 
 tints are blended with absolute black, there must be some 
 violent contrasts. Violent contrasts of themselves, as 
 shown on page 194, represent excitation. Excitation, 
 
334 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 however, in connection with blackness, — to go back to 
 what was said, on page 193, of the effects of Hght from 
 which we have developed those of pigments — ^is excita- 
 tion in connection with more or less indistinctness causing 
 perplexity and involving apprehension. At the same 
 time, as this apprehensive excitation is connected with 
 the cold colors, it is passive, or, as one might say, chilling 
 and benumbing, rather than active, or, as one might say, 
 heating and inflaming. For this reason its effects seem 
 appropriately compared to those of awe and horror repre- 
 sented b}^ the pectoral quality. Of course, color alone, 
 without other means of expression, can only approximate 
 a representation of these; but let the outlines justify it, 
 and what hues, mixed with those of the countenance, can 
 make it so ghastly as dark blue and green; or can make 
 the clouds of heaven so unheavenly as very dark blue; or 
 the sod of the earth so unearthly as dark blue-green; or 
 anything so deathlike and appalling as these colors used 
 with excessive contrasts of light and shade? Is it any 
 wonder that it is with these combinations that Gustave 
 Dor6 produces most of the harrowing effects in his series 
 of pictures illustrating Dante's ''Inferno?" 
 
 Now let us add black to yellow, orange, or red, either 
 mixing the two or placing them side by side, and notice 
 the effect. As said before, the very dark shades cannot, 
 in painting, be used exclusively. If they be, the out- 
 lines cannot be made clearly perceptible. But to use 
 black in connection with the lighter tints, introduces that 
 variety which, as said on page 194, always increases the 
 excitation of the effect. Warmth, in connection with 
 black, or, as explained in the last paragraph, with apprehen- 
 sive excitation, — emotive heat causing active resistance 
 to that which is dreaded, — does not this describe, as nearly 
 as anything can, a condition attendant upon hostility such 
 as is represented to the ear by the guttural tone. In the 
 case of the warm colors, too, still more than in that of 
 the cold, nature seems to have enforced the meanings of 
 the combinations so that we shall not mistake them. 
 Yellow and black, orange and black, red and black, or, 
 in place of black, very dark gray, green, blue, or purple, 
 which are allied to black, — is there a particularly veno- 
 mous insect or beast, or appearance of any kind, from 
 a bee, or snake, or tiger, to the fire and smoke of a con- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 335 
 
 flagration, or the lightning and cloud of a storm, in which 
 we do not detect some presence of these combinations? 
 No wonder, then, that so often in former times, at least, 
 soldiers wore them on their breasts when girded for the 
 contests of the battle-field ! 
 
 The whisper, in its weaker form, was said to represent 
 not apprehension, but a more or less agreeable degree of 
 interest. Of course, the weaker form of a negation of 
 color, at its extreme, must be represented by white. As 
 applied to tones, there is no separate term of designation 
 for this whisper when added to normal or orotund quality. 
 Elocutionists merely speak of an aspirated normal or oro- 
 tund, saying that, when aspirated, feeling is added to 
 the effect of each. Let us recall now combinations of 
 white with blue, green, or purple. Is there any diffi- 
 culty in recognizing how closely the result corresponds 
 to that which is produced by an aspirated normal tone? 
 We have all seen such combinations in summer costumes, 
 as well as in tents and awnings over windows or verandas. 
 In such cases, is there not a more exhilarating effect pro- 
 duced by them than could be produced by white alone? 
 or by one of these colors alone? Yet, at the same time, 
 is not the effect far cooler, and, in this sense, less exhilara- 
 ting, than is produced by combinations of white with red, 
 orange, or yellow? 
 
 In these latter we have, as has been said, that which 
 corresponds to the effect of the aspirated orotund, — the 
 tone used in earnest advocacy or description of some- 
 thing which is felt to be in itself of profound interest. 
 Think of the combinations of white with these warmer 
 colors. Could any language better than that just used 
 designate their peculiar influence? What than they are 
 more exhilarating or entrancing in the decorations of 
 interiors, or in banners and pageants? — Painting, Sculpture^ 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, xi. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF PITCH IN MUSIC AND POETRY 
 
 (see also pitch and verse melody and harmony). 
 In accordance with the principle of correspondence, the 
 conditions of pitch high or low, or its movements in direc- 
 tions upward or downward in the musical scale, seem to 
 be in exact analogy with correlated conditions and directions 
 with which we are all familiar in the external world of space 
 
336 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 about us; and, like them, to indicate the mental aim or 
 motive. When, for instance, one is elated, he holds his 
 head high, and his movements are varied like those of a 
 buoyant schoolboy. When one is depressed, his head 
 bends downward and his movements are few. It is the 
 same with the utterances. A soaring birds sings in a high 
 and changing key, a crouching man threatens, or a dog 
 growls in a low and monotonous key. High and varied 
 tones, therefore, seem to represent elation of spirit, or that 
 which is felt to be elevating in its influence; and low and 
 uniform tones represent depression of spirit, or that which 
 is felt to be impressive. 
 
 The same is true with reference to movements in the 
 directions of pitch. Its tendency, when two or more tones 
 at different pitch are heard in succession may be upward 
 or downward, or both upward and downward. In the last 
 case, as in the circumflex inflection, there is merely a 
 combination of the meanings in the other two cases, and we 
 need not consider it here. (See the author's "Orator's 
 Manual," pp. 56-59.) When directed upward or down- 
 ward, pitch follows laws applicable to all movement. 
 Men lift their bodies, limbs, and feet, when they start to 
 do something. They let their hands fall at their sides 
 and sit down or lie down, when they get through with 
 what they have to do. The lungs rise in inspiration and 
 fall in expiration. So with voices in speaking. Their 
 sounds rise when a man feels inspired to begin to say 
 something, e. g., "If so, I will go." They fall when the 
 inspiration is over, because he has ended saying this, e. g., 
 "If so, I will g6." In other words, upward and downward 
 movements of pitch represent the mental motive. The 
 voice rises when one is moved to open, and falls when 
 moved to close, the expression of an idea. It must be 
 borne in mind, however, that these directions of pitch 
 depend upon the relations of utterance to the sense, and 
 not merely to the sentence. If the sense does not close 
 or open where the sentence does, the tones may fall before 
 its close and rise at its end, e. g./'l will gd, if so," "Will 
 you go?" Nd, I will not, if he's there." 
 
 We may extend, and, at the same time, explain this by 
 saying that the voice rises for the purpose of opening or 
 broaching an idea; that is to say, for the purpose of point- 
 ing away from the thought immediately expressed, i. e., 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 337 
 
 when one is inclined to consider the utterances merely 
 anticipative or indecisive^ in the sense of being in them- 
 selves subordinate, insignificant, trite, negative, or question- 
 able, as contrasted with something that is expected to 
 be, or that has been, expressed by the falling inflection. 
 On the contrary, the voice falls for the purpose of closing 
 or completing an idea; that is to say, for the purpose of 
 pointing to the thought immediately expressed, i. e,, when 
 one is inclined to consider the utterances conclusive or 
 decisive, in the sense of being in themselves interesting, 
 important, noteworthy, affirmative, or positive. It falls 
 whenever it gives its sentence in the sense either of having 
 completed the expression of a sentiment or of having 
 uttered something sententiously. ... 
 
 That similar principles apply to the movements of pitch 
 in the melody of music, we might infer as a result of con- 
 sidering the subject theoretically. But we can not only 
 infer it, but perceive it as a result of a practical study of 
 facts. Notice the following text,^ which was connected 
 with the notation of the Gregorian chants, written in the 
 sixth century. . . . These chants to which, or through which, 
 all modern music is traceable, were deliberately composed 
 in order to be representative, and nothing else. 
 
 It might be supposed that there would be nothing in 
 poetic form corresponding to these upward and down- 
 ward movements. But, as a fact, any metre causing a 
 line to begin with an unaccented syllable, or to end with 
 an accented syllable, produces, in what are termed the 
 tunes of verse, — unless, as sometimes, the sense requires 
 a different inflection, — the effect of an upward move- 
 ment. Therefore, this metre naturally suggests the antici- 
 pative, indecisive, subordinate, questionable effect of the 
 upward inflection. 
 
 On the other hand, a line beginning with an accented, 
 or ending with an unaccented syllable, produces the final, 
 decisive, interesting, important, affirmative effect of the down- 
 ward movement or inflection. — Essentials of ^thetics, xii. 
 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF TONES IN POETRY AND MUSIC. 
 
 The last elocutionary element, the influence of which 
 upon poetic form we have to consider, and the second 
 
 * Containing directions for singing so as to indicate a comma, a 
 period, an interrogation mark, etc. 
 
33Si AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 that has to do with the tunes of verse, is quality; or, as it 
 is sometimes called, on account of that to which it corre- 
 sponds in painting, tone-color. Its different varieties are 
 determined by the relative proportions in which noise and 
 music are combined in them; or, in other words, by the 
 different actions of the organs of utterance in causing 
 more or less of the breath, while leaving the lungs, to be 
 vocalized and rendered resonant. 
 
 What different kinds of quality are fitted to represent, 
 it needs but little observation to discover It certainly is 
 not physical energy. When Patti passes from a loud to a 
 soft, or from an abrupt to a smooth tone, she changes 
 greatly the kinds of energy, but her voice still retains the 
 same Patti-quality. Nor does quality represent mere 
 intellectuality. A man, without changing in the least an 
 habitual nasal or wheezing quality, may give every inflec- 
 tion needed in order to represent the merely mental phases 
 of that which actuates him. But if we frighten him 
 severely, we may make it impossible for him to use any 
 other sound than a whisper; if in connection with this, 
 we anger him, he will hiss; or, if at length he recover his 
 voice, he will use the harsh, jarring, interrupted hard-^o: 
 quality of tone, termed the guttural; or, if that which he 
 would repel be too great to make anger appropriate, it 
 may widen and stiffen his throat so as to produce the hollow, 
 almost inarticulate indication of awe and horror given by 
 what is termed the pectoral quality. Release him now 
 from the influence of affright, anger, or horror, and put 
 him into a gently satisfied mood, and he will use his nearest 
 approach to pure quality. Stir him then to profound 
 emotion, inspired by what is deeply satisfying, and all his 
 vocal passages will expand again, and he will produce his 
 nearest approach to the full, round, resonant quality termed 
 orotund. 
 
 For these reasons, it seems indisputable that quality 
 represents the feelings, the temper, the spiritual condition 
 of the higher emotive nature, — what I have termed the 
 soul, by which is meant, as needs scarcely be said again, 
 the principle of life holding body and mind together — influ- 
 encing and influenced by both. The soul communicates 
 with the external world never wholly through the instinc- 
 tive nature, nor wholly through the reflective, but always 
 through one of the two modified by its connection with the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 339 
 
 other. The quality of sound, therefore, represents the qual- 
 ity of the feeling that vivifies the soul. This feeling, on its 
 physical side, and with its most physical coloring, gives us, 
 first, the serpent-like hissing aspirate; next, with an intellect- 
 ual coloring, the guttural quality ; and last, with an emotional 
 coloring, the pectoral. On its intellectual side, it gives us 
 first, with a physical coloring, the soft whispering aspirate; 
 next, with an intellectual coloring, the pure quality; and last, 
 with an emotional coloring, the orotund. Of these six forms 
 of quality, the first four are classed in a general way as 
 impure, because there is in them more breath or noise than 
 vocal tone or music; and the last two are classed as pure. 
 
 The first three again refer to what one v/ishes to repel: 
 the hissing aspirate indicating feelings like affright, amaze- 
 ment, indignation, and contempt; the guttural, as has been 
 said, hostility; and the pectoral, awe or horror. The last 
 three refer to what, if not wholly satisfactory, at least, 
 excites in one no movement aimed against it. The soft 
 whisper indicates feelings like surprise, interest, or solici- 
 tude; the tone termed distinctively the pure represents 
 gentle contemplation of what may be either joyous or sad; 
 and the orotund, deep delight, admiration, courage, or determi- 
 nation, as inspired by contemplation of the nohle or grand. 
 
 All these different qualities can be given by good elocu- 
 tionists when vocalizing almost any of the consonants or 
 vowels; but the poet for his effects must depend upon 
 the sounds necessarily given to words in ordinary pro- 
 nunciation. For instance, certain consonants, called 
 variously aspirates, sibilants, or atonies, viz. : h, s, z, w, sh, 
 wh, th, p, t, f, are aspirate in themselves; that is, we are 
 obliged to whisper when we articulate them. Therefore 
 in poetic effects, considered aside from those that are 
 elocutionary, the aspirate must be produced by using 
 words containing some of these consonants; and, if it be 
 the repellent aspirate or the hiss, by using also consonants 
 giving guttural effects, like g, j, ch, and r. — Poetry as a 
 Representative Art, xi. 
 
 As in the cases of duration, force, and pitch, so all these 
 forms of quality, too, have their correspondences in effects 
 of nature as manifested in other departments. Applied 
 to effects of water, for instance, a rushing stream would 
 represent the harsh aspirate, a rocky stream the guttural. 
 
340 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 a roiled stream the pectoral, a rippling stream the gentle 
 aspirate, a clear stream the pure, and a full, deep stream 
 the orotund. 
 
 That analogies exist between quality as used in elocu- 
 tion and in music, scarcely needs to be argued. As pro- 
 duced by the human voice, there can be no radical 
 differences between possibilities in speaking and in singing ; 
 and, as produced by constructed musical instruments, it 
 is inevitable that the mind should associate with each 
 certain representative features, and should determine them 
 by the resemblance, or supposed resemblance, of their 
 artificial tones to the quality of some tone natural to the 
 human voice, or else produced in some other way in nature. 
 In determining these resemblances, too, one would be 
 influenced, of course, by the uses which, as a rule, are 
 made of the particular instruments which he is hearing. 
 It is undoubtedly owing to associations of this kind that 
 we read of the stirring tones of the fife and drum, the solemn 
 tones of the organ, the purity and softness of the flute, the 
 gayety and triumph of the trumpet, the woe and complaint 
 of the bassoon, the pathos and humaneness of the violin. 
 When, for instance, in listening to an opera, we hear pre- 
 dominantly the clash of the cymbals or rattle of the kettle- 
 drums, associated, as these usually are, with the sharper 
 tones of the metallic instruments, we know that the sounds, 
 as in the last act of Mozart's '* Don Juan," where hell is sup- 
 posed to await the hero, represent, according to the degrees 
 of their intensity, not only the startling, but the hostile and 
 menacing effects which, in the human voice, we associate with 
 guttural quality. If any action of the play must follow 
 what we hear, we expect to see some violent conflict full 
 of malignity and peril. When the predominating sounds 
 are those of the bass drums and the lower, more hollow 
 tones of either the wind or the stringed instruments, we 
 know that, as in the orchestration which in Wagner's 
 ** Siegfried" accompanies the hero's encounter with the 
 dragon, they represent the presence of that which inspires 
 to awe and horror such as, in the human voice, we asso- 
 ciate with the pectoral quality. The resemblance to this 
 tone in its milder forms is undoubtedly that which imparts 
 a solemn effect to the music of the church organ. When, 
 again, the predominating sounds are those of the wood 
 instruments — the clarinet, the flute, even, to some extent, 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 341 
 
 the organ — we feel that these represent the gentle, passive 
 contemplation, sad or joyous, which, in elocution, is indi- 
 cated by pure quality. . . . 
 
 When, instead of the wooden wind instruments, we hear 
 the metallic, either as in the organ or in trumpets and 
 instruments of similar character, we feel that these repre- 
 sent the more profound emotions, the admiration, enthu- 
 siasm, courage, determination, that we are accustomed to 
 associate with elocutionary orotund quality. To such 
 music we expect to see troops march on to the stage, as 
 in the Soldiers' Chorus in Gounod's "Faust," giving vent 
 to their confidence in anticipation of victory, or to their 
 joy in view of its accomplishment. Once more, when we 
 hear the stringed instruments we recognize that it is their 
 peculiar function to impart intensity of feeling, just as is 
 true of the elocutionary aspirated quality. Hence, the 
 reason for the use of the violins in that scene in Wagner's 
 "Meistersinger" which takes place in the house of Hans 
 Sachs; or in the Venus music of his " Tannhauser " ; or 
 in the waltz music of Gounod's "Faust." Just as in the 
 case of the elocutionary aspirate, too, so here the effects of 
 these stringed instruments may partake of those of any of 
 the other instruments. Not only when associated, as in 
 orchestral music, with the instruments that have been 
 mentioned, but even when not associated with these, the 
 sharper tones of the strings suggest the aspirated guttural, 
 their lower hollow tones the aspirated pectoral, their struck 
 t^nes, as in the piano, the guitar, and the harp, the aspi- 
 rated pure, and their tones as produced by the bow, the 
 aspirated orotund. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and 
 Music: Music as a Representative Art, vi. 
 
 "representative significance of form" (analysis of 
 
 THE book). 
 
 "The Representative Significance of Form" begins 
 with the presumption that form, even as it exists in nature, 
 always represents some significance; and that it is from 
 nature, therefore, that, directly or indirectly, a man derives, 
 in the main, the conceptions which he embodies in art. The 
 methods of deriving such conceptions are first considered, 
 and then it is shown how each class of conceptions may be 
 represented in each of the different arts. Advancing from 
 that which is more elementary to that which is more com- 
 
342 AN ART'PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 plex, there are treated in this way the conceptions of space, 
 time, existence, matter, movement, force, arrangement, 
 operation, method of operation, organism, Hfe, import, 
 and, finally, of the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, 
 together with conceptions of truth in the abstract and in the 
 concrete, as embodied either in formulae or in action. In 
 all cases it is shown that significance and form necessarily 
 go together. After this, the different emphasis which the 
 ways of blending the two give to the one or to the other is 
 shown to distinguish artistic from religious truth, and also 
 from scientific; and the various conditions, methods, and 
 purposes are unfolded, in connection with which develop- 
 ment and expression are given to each of the three. In 
 accordance with the distinctions thus made, it is then 
 pointed out that, as manifested in art, the basic principle 
 of the religious tendency prompts to the instinctive, spon- 
 taneous, spiritual subordination of form to significance, 
 which we have in the sublime and the grand, the most 
 artistic expression of which is in epic art; that the basic 
 principle of the scientific tendency prompts to the reflec- 
 tive, responsive, materialistic equipoise of significance and 
 form, found in the picturesque and the simple, the most 
 artistic expression of which is in realistic art; and that 
 the basic principle of the distinctively artistic tendency 
 prompts to the instinctively reflective, emotive, and ideal- 
 istic subordination of significance to form, found in the 
 brilliant and the striking, the most artistic expression of 
 which is in dramatic art. The same three respective 
 tendencies, considered both in their tragic and their comic 
 phases, are shown to be at the basis also of the more im- 
 portant subdivisions of epic, realistic, and dramatic art; 
 after ample illustrations to exemplify and confirm which 
 propositions, the book closes by finally indicating as 
 developed from the same tendencies certain expressional 
 differences, as well as correspondences, between the arts 
 of Music, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture — 
 Recapitulation in Proportion and Harmony, xxvi. 
 
 RHETORICIANS, AS COLLEGE PRESIDENTS. 
 
 At that time, the presidents of all our prominent colleges 
 — men like Nott, Griffin, Hopkins, Woods, Wayland, Lord, 
 Kirkland, Humphrey, Finney — were rhetoricians, if not, as 
 was the case with many of them, elocutionists. The 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 343 
 
 whole curriculum was made a unity by aiming it in the 
 direction of expression, which certainly is a wise thing to 
 do, if the problem of education be, as has been stated in this 
 paper, how to get knowledge not into the mind, but out of it. 
 — Essay on the Literary Artist and Elocution. 
 
 rhyme, its influence on the mind {see verse an ' 
 element). 
 
 It is evident, from what has been said, that the chief 
 effect of rhyme, or the recurrence of similar sounds at the 
 ends of lines, is to introduce into the verse the element of 
 sameness. This sameness of itself, as has been intimated 
 in another place, increases the effects of versification by 
 directing attention to the ends of the lines and thus sepa- 
 rating them. Besides this, especially when the rhymes are 
 used at like intervals, as is generally the case, they tend 
 to give unity to the form. Their influence in this regard 
 is precisely analogous to that of the cadences and half 
 cadences, which, coming at the ends of musical phrases, 
 give the effect of unity to musical composition. . . . 
 
 Like these similarly ending cadences and half cadences 
 in music, rhymes furnish a framework about which, or 
 rather within which, all the other form-elements of the 
 verse are brought together. This is the reason why it is 
 easier for beginners to write poetry in rhymes than in 
 blank verse. All successful verse must have form, and 
 rhymes of themselves tend to give it this. Not only so, 
 but — what is of main importance in our present treatment 
 of the subject — they serve equally to furnish a framework 
 for the poetic thought. The rhyming words, especially the 
 last of two or three that rhyme, always appear to be especi- 
 ally emphatic. In fact, they seem to add to the emphasis 
 in almost every possible way. They augment the effects of 
 duration or quantity, because at the end of the line, where 
 the rhyme usually is, the voice, as a rule, pauses; of force, 
 because rhyming syllables, at least the last ones in which a 
 sound is repeated, appear to be pronounced more strongly 
 than others; of pitch, because, as we have found, where the 
 vowel-sounds are the same, the pitch seems the same; and of 
 quality, as we shall find, because the likeness of the rhyming 
 syllables necessarily attracts attention. For all these 
 reasons, rhymes necessarily tend to thrust into prominence 
 the ideas expressed in them. . . . They convey the impres- 
 sion, therefore, that something important has been said; 
 
344 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 and if they ^ occur frequently, they suggest that many 
 important things have been said, and said in a short time, 
 or — what is equivalent to this — that the thought in the 
 poem is moving on rapidly, an effect that could not be 
 produced by the same words arranged differently. — Poetry 
 as a Representative Art, x. 
 
 RHYMES, EFFECTS OF. 
 
 To perceive parallelism in unrhymed blank verses, it is 
 often necessary to see them printed; but in successive lines 
 ended with the same sounds, the ear recognizes it at once. — 
 Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, ix. 
 
 Placed, as they are, at the ends of lines, they serve to 
 separate these, one from the other, and to emphasize the 
 element of form in their composition. They do this, more- 
 over, by satisfying the distinctively artistic tendency of the 
 mind to compare and classify effects that are alike, indicat- 
 ing clearly the length of each line, and which lines are meant 
 to correspond. — Idem, viii. 
 
 RHYTHM (see also ACCENT, PROPORTION, PROPORTION AND 
 RHYTHM, and VERSE, CLASSIC VS. MODERN). 
 
 Art did not originate rhythm nor the satisfaction deriv- 
 able from it. Long before the times of the first artists, 
 men had had practical experience of its pleasures. Long 
 before the age of poetry, or music, or dancing, or even of 
 fences or schoolboys, the primitive man had sat upon a 
 log and kicked with his heels, producing a rhythm as per- 
 fect, in its wa}^ as that of his representatives of the present 
 who in Africa take delight in stamping their feet and 
 clapping their hands, and in America in playing upon drums 
 and tambourines, in order to keep time to the movements of 
 dancers and the tunes of singers. 
 
 When we come to ask why rhythm should be produced 
 thus, either by itself or in connection with poetry or 
 music — in short, why it should be, as seems to be the case, 
 a natural mode of expression, we cannot avoid having it 
 suggested, at once, that it corresponds to a method char- 
 acterizing all natural movement whatever, whether appeal- 
 ing to the eye or ear, or whether produced by a human 
 being or perceived in external nature. There is rhythm 
 in the beating of our pulses, in the alternate lifting and 
 falling of our chests while breathing, in our accenting 
 and leaving unaccented the syllables of our speech, in our 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 345 
 
 pausing for breath between consecutive phrases, and in 
 our balancing from side to side and pushing forward one 
 leg or one arm and then another, while walking. There 
 is rhythm in the manifestations of all the life about us, 
 in the flapping of the wings. of the bird, in the changing 
 phases of its song, even in the minutest trills that make 
 up its melody, and in the throbbings of its throat to utter 
 them; in the rising and falling of the sounds of the wind, 
 and of the swaying to and fro of the trees, as well as in 
 the flow and ebb of the surf on the seashore, and in the 
 jarring of the thunder and the zigzag course of the lightning. 
 In fact, rhythm seems to be almost as intimately associated 
 with everything that a man can see or hear, as is the beating 
 of his own heart with his own life. Even the stars, like the 
 rockets that we send toward them, speed onward in paths 
 that return upon themselves, and the phrase "music of the 
 spheres " is a logical as well as a poetical result of an endeav- 
 or to classify the grandest of all movements in accordance 
 with a method which is conceived to be universal. No 
 wonder, then, that men should feel the use of rhythm to be 
 appropriate in art-products modeled upon natural products. 
 No wonder that, connected as it is with natural movement 
 and life and the enjoyment inseparably associated with life, 
 it should seem to the civilized to be — what certainly it seems 
 to the uncivilized — an artistic end in itself. 
 
 Nor is this view of it suggested as a result merely of 
 superficial observation. It is substantiated by the more 
 searching experiments of the scientists. There have been 
 discovered, for instance, in addition to the regular beat 
 of the heart, and independent of it, rhythmical contrac- 
 tions and expansions of the walls of the arteries, increasing 
 and decreasing at regular intervals the supply of blood. 
 Such processes . . . may be checked by cutting the nerves 
 connecting . . . the vaso-motor system; and this fact is 
 taken to indicate that there is a rhythmic form of activity in 
 the nerve-centres themselves. . . . The rhythmic character 
 of nerve-action seems to indicate a possibility of the same in 
 mental action. Acting upon this suggestion, Dr. Thaddeus 
 L. Bolton, Demonstrator and Fellow in Clark University, 
 conducted, a few years ago, a series of interesting experi- 
 ments. "The first and most important object" of these 
 experiments is said to have been to determine "what the 
 mind did with a series of simple auditory impressions, in 
 
346 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 which there was absolutely no change of intensity, pitch, 
 quality, or time-interval." As a result it was found that, 
 out of fifty who were asked to listen to clicks produced by 
 an instrument prepared for the purpose, two alone failed 
 to divide these clicks into groups, the number in each group 
 being determined, mainly, by the relative rapidity with 
 which the clicks were produced. The groups were usually 
 of twos or threes, though, with greater rapidity, they passed 
 into groups of fours, sixes, and eights, always, however, when 
 the members were many, with a tendency to divide into 
 twos, threes, and fours. It was found, moreover, that, 
 whenever a second, third, or fourth click was made louder 
 than the others, the inclination to divide the clicks into 
 corresponding groups of twos, threes, or fours was increased. 
 — The Essentials of Esthetics, xvi. 
 
 Rhythm is an effect produced by a consecutive series 
 of sounds, or multiples of sounds, which, in themselves, 
 may be varied and complex; but each series of which is of 
 like duration. In other words, it is a result, as is every- 
 thing that is artistic, of grouping according to some one 
 principle — to that of time in this case — the like partial 
 effects of unlike complex wholes. ^ — Rhythm and Harmony in 
 Poetry and Music, v. 
 
 Speech we find composed of syllables each uttered with an 
 individual stress, which separates it from other syllables; 
 but, more than this, we find that every second or third 
 syllable is apt to be accented, and, largely because ac- 
 cented, is apt to be prolonged more than are the other 
 syllables. The reason for the accent is physiological. 
 The vocalized breath flows through the throat — as water 
 through the neck of a bottle — with what may be termed 
 alternate active and passive movements. The former of 
 these movements is that which, in every second, third, 
 fourth, or fifth syllable, produces the accent. In our 
 language all words of more than one syllable have come 
 to have an accent that is fixed — as distingushed from 
 variable, which may be affirmed of words in the French; 
 and all our monosyllabic articles, prepositions, and conjunc- 
 tions are unaccented, unless the sense very clearly demands 
 a different treatment. These two facts enable one to 
 arrange any number of our words so that the fixed accents 
 
 ' See page 89 of this volume. 
 
'QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS '347 
 
 shall fall, as natural utterance demands that it should, on 
 every second, third, fourth, or fifth syllable. . . . Let us turn 
 to speech again. Here we find that certain smaller groups 
 composed of combined accented and unaccented syllables 
 are themselves combined into larger groups, which are 
 separated from other larger groups of the same composite 
 character by the necessity experienced of pausing at certain 
 intervals in order to draw in the breath. . . . Nature, 
 therefore, furnishes speech with two characteristics, — 
 accents after every two, three, four, or five syllables, and 
 pauses after every four, six, eight, nine, ten, twelve, or more 
 syllables. Those who have read the former volumes of 
 this series are now asked to recall what was said in "The 
 Genesis of Art-Form," with reference to the necessity uni- 
 versally experienced by the mind of conceiving of effects 
 — so as to have a clear apprehension of them — as a unity; 
 also . . . that grouping to be effective in securing a general 
 result of unity, must be made in accordance with the 
 principle of comparison, i. e., of putting like with like, — a 
 principle which in science leads to classification, and in art 
 to the analogous results of composition.' . . . Accent thus 
 used has a tendency to form the larger rhythmic groups, 
 such as are developed into poetic lines, before it forms the 
 smaller ones, such as are developed into measures. The 
 effect of each accent is that of one click, and, no matter 
 whether many unaccented syllables or none come between 
 the accented ones, a certain number of the latter, so long as 
 all are separated by like intervals of time, constitute one 
 group such as forms one line of verse. 
 
 Br6ak, br^ak, br^ak, 
 
 On thy c61d gray st6nes, oh s6a. 
 
 And I woUld that my t6ngue could litter 
 
 The th6ughts that arise in m^. 
 
 Break, Break, Break — Tennyson. 
 
 Later, however, but only later, it is perceived that the 
 effect of each syllable too is that of one click, and that, by 
 attaching a certain fixed number of unaccented syllables 
 to each accented one, smaller groups can be formed, such as 
 constitute poetic measures. That this is the natural order 
 of development of the tendencies that lead to lines and 
 measures, can be confirmed by the slightest observation of 
 
 » See page 89 of this volume. 
 
34S AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 ordinary talking and reciting. In these we always find an 
 inclination to introduce the accented syllables with approxi- 
 mate regularity. This inclination needs only a little 
 artistic development, and they can be introduced with 
 absolute regularity. When this has been done, the form 
 seems made up of equal parts determined by the emphasized 
 syllables. — Idem, ii. 
 
 "rhythm and harmony" (analysis of the book). 
 In the volume entitled ' ' Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry 
 and Music," as also in the present volume, this method of 
 putting like with like, as modified by the conditions of 
 variety everywhere characterizing the materials with which 
 art has to work, is shown to be at the basis of all the different 
 developments of form as form with which the art of our 
 times is acquainted. Rhythm and proportion are traced 
 to effects produced by a grouping, of which the mind is 
 conscious, of like or allied measurements, or multiples of 
 measurements, in time or space; and harmony, whether of 
 spoken words, of musical notes, of outlines, or of colors, is 
 traced to a grouping, of which the mind is not conscious, of 
 like or allied measurements, or multiples of measurements, in 
 vibratory movements. To exemplify the truth of this 
 statement, as evinced in every detail of the forms of these 
 arts, has necessitated much explanation and no little repeti- 
 tion. But these are excusable if they have suggested any 
 important considerations not before recognized. For 
 instance, the latest, and perhaps the best, book produced in 
 our country which discusses poetic form, is developed from 
 the same limited conception of it indicated in the definition 
 of Poe in his essay on "The Poetic Principle," namely, 
 "the rhythmical creation of beauty." No one would say 
 that in "Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music" 
 there is any lack of thoroughness in the treatment of rhythm 
 in poetry or of its various applications and possibilities, — 
 to say nothing of the freshness of the treatment, owing to 
 the circumstance that a year before the book was published, 
 the scientific investigations that suggested, perhaps, the 
 most important conclusions in it had not been made. At 
 the same time, no one can read that book carefully and not 
 recognize that harmony, too, as distinctly differentiated 
 from rhythm, plays as noteworthy a part in the general 
 effects of poetry as in those of music; that, different as are 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 349 
 
 both factors and effects as used in poetic and in musical 
 harmony, nevertheless, the methods of it in both arts 
 illustrate identical principles. That an analogous fact is 
 true, not only in these arts, but also in painting, sculpture, 
 and architecture, has been shown in the present volume, 
 concerning the line of thought in which, however, nothing 
 need be added here. — Proportion and Harmony, xxvi. 
 
 RHYTHM AND PROPORTION, DETERMINED BY EQUAL SUB- 
 DIVISIONS (see also proportion). 
 Rhythm is a result of making, by series of noises, or 
 strokes, certain like divisions of time — small divisions, and 
 exact multiples of them in large divi.sions. But the moment 
 that the smaller divisions become so numerous that the 
 fact that they exactly go into the larger divisions is no 
 longer perceptible — as, often, when we hear more even than 
 eight or ten notes in a musical measure, or more than three 
 or four syllables in a poetic foot, — the effect ceases to be 
 rhythmical. A like fact is true of proportion. Owing to 
 the very great possibilities and complications of outlining, 
 as in squares, angles, and curves, its laws are intricate and 
 difficult to apply; but, as is shown in the volume of the 
 author entitled, "Proportion and Harmony of Line and 
 Color in Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture," the effects 
 of proportion all result, in the last analysis, from exact 
 divisions and subdivisions of space in every way analogous 
 to the divisions and subdivisions of time that produce 
 rhythm. — Essentials of Esthetics, ii. 
 
 rhythm and proportion important AND COMPLEX (see also 
 proportion). 
 In this life, it usually takes very little to start that which 
 may develop into very much. Rhythm is apparently of 
 little importance. If one knew nothing about art, what 
 could appear more absurd than for an intelligent man to 
 think it worth while, when wishing to say something, to 
 count the syllables that he utters, so that they shall reveal 
 exact divisions and subdivisions of time, such as the negro 
 makes when be beats his hands and feet for dancers? Yet 
 it is out of this simple method of counting, that art has 
 developed the most important element in the form of 
 poetry, as well as an element extremely important in the 
 form of music. When we come to examine the different 
 combinations of effects attributable to rhythm, we find that 
 
350 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 we are by no means dealing with a subject so simple as at 
 first appeared. The same is true of proportion. Before 
 deciding, for instance, that a foot or a nose is dispropor- 
 tionately large or small, it must be compared not only 
 with other feet and noses, but with the sizes of all the other 
 surrounding features in the animal or man in which it 
 appears. The same feature may look too large with small 
 surroundings, and too small with large ones. Indeed, the 
 number and variety of measurements that any extensive 
 knowledge or application of proportion involves are almost 
 incalculable. When we try to determine exactly what it is 
 that causes its results to be satisfactory, in the human form 
 . . . then we begin to perceive that this characteristic, as 
 is true of every other entering into the effects of beauty, 
 is capable of complexities as well as possibilities almost 
 infinite. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, ii. 
 
 Savages and young children with no musical training, 
 and their elders who have no ability to appreciate changes 
 in quality or pitch, all show appreciation of rhythm. Noth- 
 ing could be more perfect than that in the poetry of Pope, 
 Scott, or Byron. Yet it is said that neither of these was 
 able to distinguish one tune from another. So with many 
 dancers. One need not be able to follow a tune as a tune, in 
 order to keep time to its rhythm. — Rhythm and Harmony 
 in Poetry and Music, vi. 
 
 SCIENCE AIDED BY ART {seC also IMAGINATION AS AIDING 
 
 science). 
 Many scientists have a subtle, even a pronounced dis- 
 belief, in that arrangement of nature in accordance with 
 which matter and mind, knowledge and surmisal, always 
 move forward on parallel planes with the mind and its 
 surmisal some distance ahead. Their disbelief is owing to a 
 lack of imagination, and this is often owing to a lack of the 
 kind of culture which they might derive from giving atten- 
 tion to some phase of art. And yet the majority of them, 
 perhaps, believe that art is a mere adjunct to intellectual 
 training, — an ornamental adjunct, too, introducing, like 
 the carving on the keystone of an arch, what may be 
 interesting and pretty, but is not essentially useful. This 
 is a mistake. In important particulars, it may be said that 
 art is not the carving on the keystone, but the keystone 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 351 
 
 itself, without which the whole arch would tumble. — Essay 
 on Art and Education, 
 
 SCIENCE AS AN AID TO ART {see also ART, BREADTH OF, 
 GENIUS AND LEARNING, and INFORMATION). 
 
 Art is a development of natural tendencies, of which we 
 are not always conscious. As a rule, it is only after science 
 has brought these to light that they are recognized as 
 sustaining the relationship, which they do, to the forms in 
 which they have developed. — Rhythm and Harmony in 
 Poetry and Music, iii. 
 
 SCIENCE FOLLOWING THE LEADING OF ART {see also ART, THE 
 CONNECTING LINK). 
 
 Pythagoras was studying music when he began the 
 discovery of the laws of sound, and Leonardo and Chevreul 
 were studying art when they made their contributions to 
 the understanding of color ; and, though the time has now come 
 when those composing the advancing army of science have 
 moved into every remotest valley of the invaded country, 
 apparently needing no longer any leadership of the kind, they 
 never would have begun their advance unless, like the hosts 
 of almost every conquering army, they had at first marched 
 behind a standard that in itself was a thing of beauty. — 
 Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 SCIENCE vs. ART {see also ARTISTIC vs. SCIENTIFIC MENTAL 
 
 action). 
 
 What causes the difference in aim between one who 
 devotes himself to science and one who devotes him- 
 self to art? This: the scientist must be an informer, the 
 artist a performer. Science develops the powers of under- 
 standing and increases knowledge. Art develops the 
 powers of expression or execution, and increases skill. — 
 Essay on Artistic vs. Scientific Education. 
 
 Science and art are different, and they satisfy different 
 mental cravings, one demanding stimulus for knowledge 
 and the other for imagination. Nor was there ever a time 
 when the normal mind did not demand both. To suppose 
 that it can be satisfied with one of them is like supposing 
 that thirst can be assuaged by giving food. — The Representa- 
 tive Significance of Form, xxvi. 
 
 SCIENCE vs. ART IN EDUCATION. 
 
 No man can use his eyes, ears, memory, as science necessi- 
 tates, to say nothing of his powers of analysis and generaliza- 
 
352 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 tion, without learning a very great deal. But think how 
 much more he can learn, when he is forced into the repe- 
 titious and conscientious practice which is always necessary 
 before one can acquire that skill which is essential to success 
 in art. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 SCULPTURE, GREEK, BASED ON MODELS {see olso MODELS, and 
 OBSERVATION VS. THEORY). 
 
 One fact always affords a strong argument in support of 
 the theory that Greek sculpture was produced mainly by 
 an application of mathematical principles, and this is the 
 conventional character of the face of the statue. With few 
 exceptions, the nose, mouth, eyes, and forehead all show the 
 results of the same relative measurements ; and the question 
 is asked very pertinently. If the face were conventional 
 why was not the form also? To answer this question, 
 makes it necessary to direct attention to something which 
 we moderns find it difficult to understand, . . . that char- 
 acter and thought are expressed in the whole human figure. 
 Of this, the face forms a very small part. If we be in 
 circumstances where we can see the whole figure, there, by a 
 necessary law of the mind, we think mainly of that which 
 occupies the main part of the field of vision. If we have 
 analyzed our own thoughts, when witnessing a scene in 
 which the clothing of the performers was less ample than 
 that allotted by our standards of civilization, — an athletic 
 exhibition, or the bathing of boys on the seashore, — we 
 shall recall that those with the finest forms and most grace- 
 ful movements invariably attracted our attention and won 
 our admiration, no matter how ugly may have been their 
 countenances. In such circumstances, we scarcely seem to 
 notice countenances at all. . . . Many beautiful forms that 
 served as models for the Greek artists were undoubtedly 
 surmounted by ugly faces. The Greek did not believe 
 in ugliness anywhere; and for this reason, in place of the 
 faces that he found, he may have substituted his conven- 
 tional face, probably itself a copy of some face which com- 
 mon opinion had pronounced beautiful. Moreover, by 
 using this face and no other, he would avoid giving offense 
 to those who might desire to have him reproduce their 
 countenances as well as forms. Besides this, too, large 
 numbers of his statues represented gods, and it would 
 scarcely have been considered appropriate had he repre- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 353 
 
 sented these by using a literal portrait of a living person. 
 Once more, it must not be supposed, even though it be 
 admitted that the Greek used models freely, that he was 
 often content to have all the parts of any one statue literally 
 reproduce all the parts of any one model. On the contrary, 
 the history of the best period of his art is a record of changes 
 in forms, as these were developed with more or less gradual- 
 ness, the one from the other. . . . There is another considera- 
 tion which, in studying the proportions of the human body, 
 necessitates taking the observation of nature for the point 
 of departure. This is the fact that different forms of men, 
 even when conforming to accepted standards, or conforming 
 sufficiently to be all equally well proportioned, differ in 
 their measurements. . . . Such variations may be ascribable 
 to differences not only in occupation, age, and sex, but also 
 in temperament, — the mental, the vital, and the motive 
 which are respectively expressive of very different intel- 
 lectual and physical traits, each tending to a different general 
 contour. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, vii. 
 
 SCULPTURE, SUBJECTS OF {see PAINTING l'^. SCULPTURE, 
 
 THEIR subjects). 
 
 SCULPTURE SUGGESTING MOVEMENT. 
 
 Statuary is the representation of arrested movement, not 
 of movement in itself; and to work upon the supposition 
 that it is the latter is to deviate from the legitimate purpose 
 of the art. At the same time, the statue must suggest that 
 some movement has taken place or is to do so. The opposite 
 tendency can be made too prominent only at the expense of 
 impressions of intelligibility and animation. That which 
 was meant for a statue will then become, like many of the 
 monuments of our public men, merely an effigy, — as if, 
 forsooth, its object were to remind one, above all things, 
 that the man is dead! — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, XXIV. 
 
 SELECTION, IN ART WORK. 
 
 One of the most interesting things in this world is an 
 ant-hill. We come upon it in a grass-plot, or a rocky waste, 
 or a field of loam of a certain hue or texture, and it usually 
 consists of a gathering together, grain by grain, of materials 
 and colors not interesting in themselves, yet made so by 
 being selected from surrounding ones. Man has a way of 
 making things interesting through an exercise of a similar 
 33 
 
354 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 faculty of selection. That from which he selects usually 
 comprises two elements — substance and appearance; more 
 strictly, substance not having form and substance having 
 it, or needing to be made to have it in order to be that for 
 which it is of value. It is with this latter, with substance 
 having form, that art is concerned. — Essay on Teaching in 
 Drawing. 
 
 SENTIMENT CHARACTERISTIC OF ART-APPRECIATION {sec dlso 
 ARTISTIC natures). 
 
 A slight attempt to recall the foremost trait of expres- 
 sion distinguishing any man who has given himself to the 
 study and production of art will verify by facts this con- 
 clusion of Schiller. Is it not true that artists and poets, 
 and often even mere admirers of music, painting, sculp- 
 ture, or poetry, are persons given above all things to 
 sentiment? Can we not perceive this sometimes in their 
 very gaits and gestures, in the involuntary waverings of 
 their lips, in the unconscious bewilderment of their eyes? 
 Does not the very sight of them often make us feel that 
 they are men who have been exhilarated, if not intoxi- 
 cated, by drinking in thoughts that brim above the com- 
 monplace; that they are men whose moods are loyal to 
 an all-pervading sovereignty of soul? Can we not often 
 detect, behind all that they do or say, the spiritual force 
 of unseen ideality, the unselfishness of non-material pur- 
 pose, the virtue of uncompelled industry, the enthusiasm 
 that revels amid dim twilights of inquiry and starry mid- 
 nights of aspiration? How different is their mien from 
 that of those who manifest none of their vaguer, softer 
 qualities, but pride themselves upon the fact that they 
 are sharp! And, verily, too often they are sharp, their 
 very visages whittled to a point like snow-ploughs on a 
 wintry track that always draw attention downward and 
 cleave through paths that chill. The brightness of their 
 eyes is that of diamonds that are used only to cut, the 
 summons of their voices that of trumpets that are ever 
 blowing of their own sufficiency. No radiance of a spiritual 
 light that streams from inward visions is haloed from 
 the one. No call toward a sphere too subtle to be heralded 
 by aught except "the still small voice" is echoed from the 
 other. What is lacking in the methods of mental action of 
 men like these, as every one who knows the highest possi- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 355 
 
 bill ties of art can testify, is the kind of culture which leads 
 to the conception within and the expression without of 
 sentiment — not sentimentality, which is always selfish, as 
 well as a caricature, and an effect not based upon facts; but 
 vigorous rranly sentiment, something rooted deep in com- 
 mon-sense but yet not common; rather its uncommon 
 development when the material branch and leaf, grown up- 
 ward, burst into that which sheds the fragrance of the 
 spirit's flower. — Essentials of Msthetics, iii. 
 
 SERENADE. 
 
 It is mainly, too, by the contrast afforded between a 
 realm known only to the soul and one apprehended only 
 by the senses; by the transition from the subjectivity 
 of dreaming to the objectivity of listening, that such 
 transcendent sweetness is sometimes imparted to the 
 serenade at midnight, and also to the songs of the birds 
 at daybreak. — The Representative Significance of Form, xii. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE AND FORM IN ART (sce also FORM AND SIG- 
 NIFICANCE, also FORM VS. significance). 
 Art involves the representation not merely of significance 
 nor merely of form; and those who wish to further its 
 interests cannot do so by directing the energies of the artist 
 exclusively to either. The captain of a yawl tossed by 
 ocean waves might as well urge every one on board of it 
 to rush to one side of it or to the other, and expect to reach 
 his landing without capsizing. — Painting, Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, XV. 
 
 The two tendencies of art thus exemplified, and the 
 constant inclination of the mind, when perceiving the 
 deficiency in the one, to turn altogether away from it to that 
 which, when regarded in itself alone, causes equal deficiency 
 in the other, make one feel, at times, as if it were wellnigh 
 hopeless to try, as has been attempted in these volumes, to 
 introduce into the conceptions of American artists and 
 critics even a beginning of that balance between the two 
 which always characterizes the highest art, — that of ancient 
 Hellenism, for instance, which was equally careful to repro- 
 duce only the ideal in thought and only the beautiful in 
 form. I have concluded that nothing could more certainly 
 accomplish the desired end than a practical recognition of 
 the relationship of art both to religion on the one hand and 
 to science on the other, together with a recognition of the 
 
356 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 natural limitations to art which such a double relationship 
 necessarily involves. — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, Preface. 
 
 Depending partly upon outward form, which mainly 
 requires a practice of the method pursued in classic art, 
 and partly upon the thought or design embodied in the 
 form, which mainly requires a practice of the method 
 pursued in romantic art, these artistic effects appeal partly 
 to the outward senses and partly to the inward mind; and 
 only when they appeal to both are the highest possibilities 
 of any art realized. — Art in Theory, iii. 
 
 We judge of others by ourselves. We judge of their art 
 by the art which is possible to ourselves. While great art 
 requires great breadth of view and distance of aim, the 
 majority of men are not great. Their views are narrow, 
 and their goals are near them. When their attention is 
 directed to significance, they forget to attend to the require- 
 ments of form; and when attention is directed to form, they 
 forget about significance. That which they themselves do, 
 they naturally suppose that everybody must do. Human 
 nature being what it is, they naturally come to think too that 
 this is what everybody ought to do. For, unless they are 
 to admit that they, themselves, are not entitled to rank 
 with artists of the foremost class, what can be allowed to 
 determine excellence in art except their own standards? 
 At periods like the beginning of the nineteenth century, or 
 in countries like England or Germany, where value in art 
 is mainly thought to be determined by significance, this is 
 that for which they aim; and in the degree in which they 
 are forced to recognize that there can be no accurate re- 
 production of appearances without thorough study of the 
 methods of the best artists, and facility acquired by per- 
 sistent practice, they will be anxious to convince them- 
 selves and to persuade others that mastery in significance 
 can compensate for a lack of mastery in technique. On 
 the other hand, at a period like the present, and in countries 
 like France and our own, where value in art is mainly 
 thought to be determined by success in reproducing appear- 
 ances, they will aim to do this; and, in the degree in which 
 they are forced to recognize that significance cannot be 
 given to an art-product without great constructive exercise 
 of imagination and invention, they will be anxious to 
 
'^ QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 357 
 
 believe for themselves, and to persuade the world, that 
 success in technique can compensate for success in render- 
 ing the product significant. . . . But is it a fact that attention 
 to significance is inconsistent with an equal degree of atten- 
 tion given to form? Why should this be the case? In 
 poetry a metaphor or simile is not less but more successful 
 in the degree in which to the representation of the thought 
 involved it adds fidelity to the scene in nature by a com- 
 parison with which this thought is represented. — Paintings 
 Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, xiii. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE, AN ELEMENT OF THE FORM DEVELOPED BY 
 
 ART. 
 
 The general, if not the aesthetic, public, upon whose 
 judgment the rank of the art-work must ultimately depend, 
 know and care little about technique, except so far as it 
 has enabled the artist to secure for his product a certain 
 satisfactory representative effect. But this effect depends 
 in some cases as much upon what may be termed the 
 expressional norm chosen for the nucleus of development, 
 as upon the method of its development; in other words, 
 as much upon that which is significant in the work as upon 
 that which is excellent in its form. Successful art is always 
 the insignia with which the play-impulse decorates that 
 which, before the decoration, has shown in practical relations 
 its right to receive it. Just as a successful drama is an 
 artistic development of imagination at play with the 
 words of natural conversation; so a successful melody is 
 a development of the same at play with the intonations of 
 natural conversation; and a successful picture, of the same 
 at play with the outlines and colors of natural scenes. 
 What imagination does is to elaborate the form, this 
 being accomplished in our own day through carrying out 
 the laws of complicated systems of rhythm, harmony, 
 drawing, or coloring. But the forms that art, if high art, 
 in each case elaborates, are forms of expressing thought 
 and emotion. — Idem, Preface. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE IN ART {see also FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE). 
 
 By significance in art is meant its mental as distinguished 
 from its material effects, whether these material effects 
 be produced by the external form itself, or by the image 
 of this form which reflectively appears in imagination; 
 and thought and emotion are effects as inseparable in 
 
358 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 mental experience as perception and feeling are in the 
 experience of the senses. Indeed, in the term humanities, 
 so often applied to the arts, we may recognize a conception 
 equally suggestive of the sources of understanding and of 
 sympathy. These arts address not only the senses and 
 the sense-influenced imagination, but, through them, the 
 whole range of the mind's activities. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, i. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE IN ART-FORM 
 
 Thoughts and emotions are stirred to activity when the 
 eye perceives objects, just as inevitably as rays of light 
 surround a match when it is struck. Inseparably, in such 
 cases two elements of interest are present. One is the 
 result of the effect perceived by the eye; the other, of the 
 effect experienced in the mind. This latter effect consists 
 of imaginative processes which, according to the methods 
 unfolded in Chapter I., are suggested by way of association 
 or of comparison. It is when faces appear to be thinking 
 or feeHng something, when figures, alone or in connection 
 with other figures, appear to be doing something, when 
 fields, houses, hills, waves, clouds, give indications of cul- 
 ture, comfort, convulsion, storm, or sunshine, whatever it 
 may be, — it is then, and in the exact degree in which this 
 is so, that the objects in connection with which we have 
 these suggestions prove most interesting. The worth of a 
 diamond is measured by the quantity and quality of the 
 light emitted by it. The worth of an object of perception 
 is measured by the quantity and quality of "that light 
 which never was on sea or land" — in other words, by the 
 amount and character of thought and emotion which it 
 awakens. 
 
 If this be so — and who can deny itP^why does it not 
 follow that the art which represents these visible objects 
 can be successful in the degree only in which it represents 
 also the thought or emotion upon which so much of their 
 interest depends? Such certainly must be the conclusion 
 of all except those who pretend to hold a theory which 
 even they themselves do not seem to understand, namely 
 that, given the art-form, the art-thought appropriate 
 for it will be suggested necessarily. As a critic of "Art in 
 Theory" took occasion to say: "Art is simply, wholly, 
 and entirely a matter of form. . . . The best critical 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 359 
 
 opinion, nowadays, assumes the identity of the art-form 
 with the art-meaning." The only trouble with this an- 
 swer is that, in the sense in which one would naturally 
 interpret it, it is not true. All art-significance must be 
 expressed through art-form; but precisely the same natural 
 form selected for art-imitation may convey a very different 
 quality of significance according to the treatment given it 
 by the artist. One thing that he can always do, is to 
 arrange features so as to make them express what he wishes 
 them to express. It is always possible for him to analyze 
 and separate a form charming in itself from a significance 
 which could make it still more charming. He can paint a 
 face in such a passive condition that it will appear to have 
 no mind behind it; or he can rouse his model to reflection 
 or laughter, or imagine for himself the results of these, and 
 transfer from the face to his canvas only such colors and 
 outlines as give one a glimpse of the soul. Still more can 
 he do the same when it is possible, in accordance with the 
 principles of pantomime, to arrange for his purposes the 
 pose of the whole figure; and the result may be rendered 
 yet more effective through the opportunities afforded by 
 the mutual relations, each to each, which may be indicated 
 through the poses of several figures. The same principle 
 applies also to landscapes. It is one thing to represent the 
 material effects of sunshine and storm, and another thing to 
 represent their mental effects, — the effects which they have 
 upon the imagination; and a painter can content himself 
 with doing the first, or, if he choose, he can do both. This 
 is not to say that, if he do merely the former, his product 
 will have no significance. Wherever there is form there 
 is some significance, if only because there is a lack of it. 
 What is meant by the ground taken in this paragraph is 
 that unless the artist have it in mind to represent signifi- 
 cance, his work, as a rule, will reveal only such as is of trifling 
 importance, such as has no distinctive meaning; and art 
 that is not distinctive in a direction in which it might be 
 so, is not art of a high quality. — Paintings Sculpture^ and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, xiii. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE IN PAINTING. 
 
 , The world in general judges of subjects by the possibilities 
 of significance in them. There are both greater opportunity 
 and necessity for manifesting thought and emotion in 
 
36o AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 connection with a landscape than with a dish of fruit or a 
 vase of flowers; and in connection with human figures than 
 with landscapes. Of course, many pictures of fruits and 
 flowers are superior, as works of art, to many pictures of 
 human figures; but in case of equal skill displayed in the 
 representation of form, the art- work ranks highest which 
 necessitates thought and emotion of the highest quality. 
 This principle enables us to rank as subjects not only 
 flowers and fruits below landscapes, and landscapes below 
 human figures, but to rank below others certain products 
 representing exactly the same objects. For instance, 
 flowers, oranges, grapes, apples, or wine or beer in a glass, 
 ■ — all these may be portrayed so skillfully as to be exceedingly 
 artistic. But it is easy to perceive that the appeal of the 
 picture as a thing of significance may be differently deter- 
 mined by different circumstances. A vase of flowers 
 represented as being in a room upon the sill of a closed 
 window, beyond which, outside the house, can be seen 
 snowdrifts and frost-laden trees ; or fruits and viands repre- 
 sented as heaped upon a table where nevertheless a half- 
 empty plate and glass and an unfolded napkin give evidence 
 that some one has already partaken of all that he wishes, 
 with, perhaps, a window near by, through which a half- 
 starved face of a child is wistfully peering, — arrangements 
 like these, or hundreds of a similar character, which might 
 be thought out or felt out, would put thought and emotion 
 into the picture; and thus make it representative of these. 
 Can anybody deny that pictures thus made significant by 
 means of arrangement, if equally well executed, would rank 
 higher than pictures merely imitative? — Essentials of 
 JEstheticSy vii. 
 
 When we see a party of children, we may be interested 
 in them on account of the symmetrical outlines of their 
 forms, or of the glow of health in their faces. But there 
 are other considerations that may increase our interest. 
 One is the fact that we see them doing something which 
 their actions indicate. Another is that they are expressing 
 something which their countenances indicate; and, still 
 another, that they are children whom we know and love. 
 Nor is it true that any of these latter considerations, which 
 increase our interest, necessarily interfere with the degree 
 
^QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 361 
 
 of interest excited in us by their grace or beauty of form. — 
 Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 
 XV. 
 
 A picture of a child represents by way of association any 
 child, and therefore causes a mother, upon seeing it, to 
 recall instinctively her own child, and, doing so, to take 
 an interest in it. But in the degree in which the picture, 
 besides this, represents her child by way of comparison — ■ 
 in the degree in which agreement in each detail of sex, 
 age, size, dress, and countenance satisfies her critical reflec- 
 tive powers, in this degree will the interest awakened in 
 her pass into emotion. The same principle applies to 
 scenery. Owing to their associations with some particular 
 lake or mountain, certain persons are instinctively interested 
 in a painting of any lake or mountain. But the distinctively 
 emotional effects of the picture are always increased in the 
 degree in which all the details, the more men reflect upon 
 them, are perceived to resemble those of the particular 
 lake or mountain with which they have associated it. So 
 with sculpture and architecture. Because of the principle 
 of association, certain persons cannot avoid an instinctive 
 tribute of reverence when they enter any chapel and stand 
 before the statue of any saint. But let the chapel or statue 
 either in its general form or in certain of its details — as of 
 flowers, leaves, symbols, etc., — recall, distinctly, by way 
 of comparison, that particular chapel or personality with 
 which they associate it, and their reverence will be the result 
 of a deeper phase of emotion. Thus we find both logic and 
 experience confirming from a new point of view what was 
 said in "Art in Theory" with reference to the importance 
 in high art of having the art-form represent both mental 
 conceptions — to represent which alone it would need 
 merely to suggest a certain association of ideas — and also 
 audible or visible material phenomena, to represent which 
 alone, it would need merely to manifest imitation. — Idem, i. 
 
 "He is what I call a vulgar painter," said a critic, some 
 time ago, when speaking of an artist. "Are you getting 
 ethical in your tastes?" was asked. "Not that," he 
 answered, "but don't you remember that picture of a little 
 girl by Sargent in the National Academy Exhibition last 
 year? You couldn't glance at it, in the most superficial 
 way, without recognizing at once that it was a child of high- 
 
362 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 toned, probably intellectual, spiritually-minded, aristo- 
 cratic parentage and surroundings. Now, if the man of 
 whom I was speaking had painted that child, he could 
 not have kept from making her look like a coarse-haired, 
 hide-skinned peasant." It is easy to perceive that, if 
 this criticism were justifiable, the fault indicated would 
 be largely owing to the failure of the artist to recognize 
 the thoughts and feelings that men naturally associate 
 with certain appearances of line and color. It would 
 be largely owing to the fact that he had never learned 
 that the round, ruddy form of the vital temperament that 
 blossoms amid the breeze and sunshine of the open field 
 has a very different significance from the more complex 
 and delicate curves and colors that appear where the 
 nervous temperament is ripened behind the sheltering 
 window-panes of the study. An artist believing in sig- 
 nificance merely enough to recognize the necessity of 
 representing it in some way could, with a very few thrusts 
 of his knife, to say nothing of his brush, at one and the 
 same time relieve the inflammation of chapped cheeks, 
 and inject into the veins some of the blue blood of aristo- 
 cracy. — Essentials of Esthetics, v. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE IN POETRY. 
 
 Think of the literary prospects of a country, of the 
 possibilities of its receiving any inspiring impulses from its 
 poets at a period when new authors, writing with the 
 acknowledged motive of Dante, Milton, or Wordsworth, 
 would, for this reason and for no other reason, fail to com- 
 mend themselves to the leaders of literary opinion! Yet 
 one who has followed the views expressed in what may be 
 termed the professional critical journals of our country, 
 would not be far astray in claiming that this accurately 
 describes our own condition. The same France from 
 which we have derived the notion that significance is not 
 essential to painting, has also taught us, and the lesson 
 has been accepted and subtly assimilated so as to become, 
 almost unconsciously to ourselves, a part of the literary 
 belief of some of us, that it is not essential, either, to poetry. 
 In fact. Max Nordau's statement in "Degeneration," 
 that "The theory of the importance of form, of the intrinsic 
 value of beauty in the sound of words, of the sensuous 
 pleasure to be derived from sonorous syllables without 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 363 
 
 regard to their sense, and of the uselessness and even harm- 
 fulness of thought in poetry has become decisive in the 
 most recent development of poetry," could be applied to 
 France not only but to our own country. . . . 
 
 The reason why such writers fail to comprehend that 
 which is true of representative significance, is easy enough 
 to understand. Art is a complex subject. Significance is 
 no more essential in it than is technique; and the mere 
 rudiments of this it takes years to master. As both Goethe 
 and Longfellow have told us, the pathway to art, even if 
 by this we mean merely the art of versifying, or of coloring 
 with proficiency, is long. Unfortunately for many it is so 
 very long that before they are fairly in sight of its termi- 
 nation they have apparently lost sight of everything else. — 
 Paintings Sculpture and Architecture as Representative Arts, 
 Preface. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE NECESSARY IN ART. 
 
 Effects, though beautiful in nature, are wrongly used in 
 the highest art, if they be used on the supposition that, 
 even in their most insignificant features, they are not 
 vehicles of expression. A painting ranks higher than a 
 photograph and a play than a phonograph mainly because 
 one can read the thought, share the emotion, and sym- 
 pathize with the purpose behind not only its general con- 
 ception but every minutest part — every line or word — 
 through which the conception is presented. It is illogical 
 to argue that this fact does not rule out of the domain of 
 high art a very large proportion of what artists and critics 
 of less delicate aesthetic sensibility — not to say sense — 
 fancy that some cannot stomach merely because they have 
 no artistic taste. — The Essentials of Esthetics, xviii. 
 
 SIGNIFICANCE VS. THE FORM IN ART. 
 
 There is a clear distinction, the recognition of which is 
 philosophically essential, between the effects of a form 
 physically fitted to produce a certain physiological result in 
 the ear or the eye, as do some of the phenomena of tone 
 or of color, or else artistically fitted to produce a certain 
 psychological result or image in imagination, — there is a 
 clear distinction between these effects and the implicit or 
 suggestive, rather than explicit or arbitrary, effects upon 
 thought or emotion, which, invariably, when the mind 
 perceives art's real or imagined outlines, seem to surround 
 
364 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 these outlines as by a halo. This halo of thoughts and 
 emotions surrounding the natural form as represented in 
 the art-product, or surrounding the image of this product 
 as represented in imagination, constitutes what will be 
 termed the representative significance. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, i. 
 
 It is not significance that makes a picture ordinary: this 
 merely makes it a picture rather than a product of decora- 
 tive art. That which makes it ordinary is the form in 
 which the significance is presented. To change a theological 
 essay into a "Paradise Lost," it would not be necessary to 
 drop the significance: that could be kept; but it would be 
 necessary to change the form. — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 SIMPLICITY AND COMPLEXITY. 
 
 Simplicity is the door through which alone intelligence can 
 enter into the complex. — Proportion and Harmony, Preface. 
 
 SINCERITY IN ART {sce ARCHITECTURE, FRAUD IN, and 
 
 ornament). 
 
 The term sincerity indicates one's conception that the 
 artist has employed material which really is what it seems to 
 be, — wood, if it seem wood; stone, if it seem stone; iron, if 
 it seem iron. Sincerity even discards, at times, the use 
 of paint, on the ground that it conceals the genuine sub- 
 stance. So, too, owing in part also to the intrinsic beauty 
 of the graining of almost any kind of wood, the same 
 principle has led to a method of finishing this so as to reveal 
 its natural character. It is useless to do more than point 
 out that, as illustrated in all these cases, sincerity is merely 
 one way of applying the broader general principle that 
 architecture should represent nature. — Painting, Sculpture, 
 and Architecture as Representative Arts, xxi. 
 singing together. 
 
 Do you know that there is a theory that the tendency of 
 singing is to cause the hearts and pulses of all those joining 
 in the music, even listening to it, to beat in unison? — to 
 cause the currents of life in the veins, nerves, brains, even 
 souls of those affected by it, to move according to similar 
 methods? — in fact, to produce an inner as well as an outer 
 harmony. — Suggestions for the Spiritual Life, xx. 
 singleness of aim in art. 
 
 Even though one be not a German, then, he may be 
 inclined to think, at times, that there is philosophy as 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 365 
 
 well as comfort in the German's way of listening to classic 
 music in a plain beer-hall, with the outlines of that but 
 half revealed behind the fumes of tobacco. We may con- 
 clude, too, that there is artistic tact as well as adherence 
 to custom in the twilight vesper services of the cathedral, 
 where the choir is hidden in the gallery, and about one is 
 nothing distinctly visible save the mighty arches of the 
 nave looming in misty forms above, and the vague outlines 
 of the multitude bowing beneath it. . . . Art, like everything 
 else that is human, is effective, for one thing, in the degree 
 in which its efforts are directed toward one aim that is 
 made distinct and separate from all else whatever, whether 
 appealing to the ear or to the eye. Why could there not 
 be, if not a style, at least a mode of rendering music in 
 the future, which should be to that of the present what 
 the most thrilling choral of the cathedral is to the most 
 trivial chorus of the barroom? — The Representative Signifi- 
 cance of Forniy xxvi. 
 
 SKILL, HOW ACQUIRED {see also DRILL, INSPIRED, THE, AND 
 THE ARTISTIC, and PRACTICE, ITS EFFECTS). 
 
 Skill can be acquired only through practice; and this 
 practice, like that of one learning to play on a musical 
 instrument, always involves thought and labor expended 
 not upon completed results but upon certain analyzed 
 elements. — Essay on Artistic vs. Scientific Education. 
 
 SKILL WITH REVISION NEEDED IN ART. 
 
 Those who confound religious with what is termed artistic 
 inspiration, will almost necessarily estimate musicians, 
 actors, poets, orators, and even sculptors, painters, and 
 architects by the unconscious facility which they manifest 
 in conception and execution. But, though owing to the 
 pliability of his conscious nature to subconscious influence, 
 the artist does, in certain moods, manifest this facility, it 
 is not too much to say that no product of genius has ever, 
 even in such moods, sustained itself on a high, artistic 
 level, except as a result of much previous study and practice 
 which has developed skill; nor, even then, has work thus 
 produced been able to satisfy the highest demands of art, 
 unless it has been very carefully and consciously revised. 
 This is a fact essential to recognize, but very difficult to get 
 into the minds either of the young who wish to become 
 artists, or of the general public, or even of critics upon 
 
366 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 whom both artists and the public depend for instruction. — 
 The Representative Significance of Form, vii. 
 
 SKY-SCRAPERS {see also ARCHITECTURE, EXPRESSIVE OF 
 CHARACTER, and MORALITY AS INFLUENCED BY 
 
 architecture). 
 
 No one can deny that it is representative. The trouble is 
 that it does not represent what is agreeable or inspiring. It 
 represents, alas, New York. It represents the commercial 
 spirit entirely overtopping the aesthetic and sanitary in 
 general; and the religious and domestic, as manifested by 
 the church and house to the left, in particular. In more 
 senses than one it represents selfishness and greed, en- 
 tirely throwing into the shade beauty, health, kindness, 
 rationality, and safety. Were it possible for any artistic 
 motive to appeal to our legislatures, they would pass laws 
 enabling owners of churches and houses afflicted as are 
 these at the left of this picture, to obtain from any one 
 erecting a building like the tall one, damages of an amount 
 to render its erection impossible. Beautiful building as it 
 is, considered only in itself, it makes worse than wasted 
 every penny ever expended for the purpose of giving the 
 adjoining buildings architectural dignity or value. 
 
 Of course, nobody can imagine that our legislators will 
 ever be influenced by aesthetic considerations. But they 
 might be reached by other considerations. To say nothing 
 of preventing risk to life through earthquake or conflagra- 
 tion in edifices, fireproof too often only in name, some 
 law should be found to prevent robbing one's near neighbors 
 of sunshine and health, as well as one's distant neighbors of 
 real estate values, which a less grasping appropriation of for- 
 tunately situated lots would distribute more generally. In 
 fact, the conditions are such that it would not be strange 
 if, at no distant date, the practical and moral aspects of the 
 subject, aside from the aesthetic, would so appeal to public 
 sentiment that offices and hotels in these high buildings 
 would be as much avoided as now they are sought. 
 
 It may be urged that high building cannot be prevented 
 in this country, because it is free. But it is not free — for 
 those who interfere with even the convenience, not to say 
 the rights, of others. There is a law in certain states of 
 Germany that no fagade can be higher than the width of 
 the street which it faces. Some such law passed in our 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 367 
 
 own States, in order to secure health and safety, would do 
 this not only, but probably attain also the desired aesthetic 
 end. Architects, assured that no building could exceed 
 a certain height, would be quite certain to prevent other 
 buildings from overtopping their own, by seeing that 
 theirs were carried up to the exact limits of possibility. 
 Were this done, our streets would have a uniform sky- 
 line. Meantime, while legislation falters, why should not 
 the aesthetic considerations influence individuals? Why 
 should not those interested in the development of new 
 streets have introduced into the deeds sold a prescribed 
 height beyond which facades should not be carried? Or, 
 to enlarge the question, and this in a practical direction, 
 why should not trustees of institutions of learning pass 
 laws prescribing not only the sky-line, but the color and 
 style of new buildings erected by benefactors. — Paintings 
 Sculpture^ and Architecture as Representative Arts, xix. 
 
 SMALL CAUSES OF GREAT RESULTS. 
 
 A wave breaking upon the seacoast with its spray dash- 
 ing up to sparkle in the sunshine has a grand and beautiful 
 effect. But what makes the wave? — An innumerable 
 number of little springs hidden in obscure places in the 
 mountains. In the little springs there are no waves. But 
 there would be none anywhere, were it not for the cumula- 
 tive effects of all the springs together. So with great 
 achievements in art. They are the cumulative effects of 
 little degrees of knowledge and skill, started in thousands 
 of obscure places, and apparently wasted as they sink into 
 depths of greater obscurity. Special attainments in this 
 world are based, as a rule, upon general attainments. That 
 which towers high must have broad foundations. — Essay 
 on Teaching in Drawing. 
 
 SMALL PERFECTION NECESSARY FOR GREAT PRODUCTS. 
 
 Probably, Homer would not have stood where he does in 
 the history of poetry, had he not spent his entire mature 
 life in traveling about the country, and repeating and, 
 therefore, constantly and inevitably revising his Iliad and 
 Odyssey. In fact, as every artist — but, unfortunately 
 not every critic — knows, it is largely in the subtle small 
 points that a superior production differs from an inferior 
 one. It is these that determine the quality of the work, 
 that make it fine-grained, and cause the difference between 
 
368 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 the products of a master and of an amateur. The great 
 logician never drops a single link that will strengthen the 
 chain of his argument. The melody and rhythm of every 
 line of the great poem pulse with the living presence of the 
 artistic ideal that inspires the whole. The great painting 
 can stand the test of the microscope. * * Turner never passes 
 his brush over one thousandth of an inch," says Ruskin, 
 *' without meaning." — Suggestions for the Spiritual Life, xiv. 
 
 SPIRIT OF THE AGE, AS EXPRESSED IN ART {see also GENIUS 
 
 and SUBCONSCIOUS mental action). 
 If there be anything which, very often, the higher arts 
 are distinctly not, it is the expression of the spirit of their 
 age. Greek architecture of the fourth century before 
 Christ, and Gothic of the thirteenth after him, may have 
 been this; although even they were developments of what 
 had been originated long before. But all the unmodified 
 examples of Greek or Gothic architecture produced since 
 then — and at certain periods they have abounded to the 
 exclusion of almost every other style of building — have 
 been expressions not of the age in which they were produced, 
 but of that long past age in which their models were pro- 
 duced. The same in principle is true in all the arts. The 
 forms most prevalent in poetry, painting, sculpture, even in 
 music, are always more or less traditional, determined, 
 that is, by the artists of the past. As, in its nature, the 
 traditional is not essentially different from the historic, it is 
 doubtful whether these conditions will not continue in the 
 direct degree in which, in the study of art, this latter is 
 made to dominate; and it is not at all doubtful whether the 
 criticism calling itself historic is not belying its title when . . . 
 it ignores the historic fact that forms, which logically ought 
 to develop according to the spirit of an age, very often, 
 owing to a servitude to conventionality that interferes with 
 a free expression of originality, do not so develop. — Art in 
 Theory y Preface. 
 
 spiritual development traceable to art. 
 
 Nor is there a statue or a painting which depicts natural 
 life, especially human life, as we are accustomed in our own 
 day to see it — yet notice that this argument could not 
 apply, even remotely, to anything approaching deformity 
 or vulgarity — but every curve or color in it seems to frame 
 at times the soul of one to be loved, not by another, but by 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 369 
 
 ourselves; and, so far as Providence sends spiritual develop- 
 ment through imparting a sense of sympathy with friend, 
 brother, sister, father, mother, wife, or child, there, in the 
 presence of art, that development for a while is experienced. 
 — Essay on Art and Education. 
 
 SPIRITUAL IN ART RELATED TO THE SUBCONSCIOUS. 
 
 To say nothing of religion — what a revival of art there 
 might be, in an age which many deem too materialistic to 
 be at all poetic, if only what is unfolded in these pages with 
 reference to the subconscious and the spiritual could be 
 widely recognized to be true! — The Representative Signifi- 
 cance of Form, Preface. 
 
 SPIRITUAL SUGGESTIVENESS OF ART. 
 
 Notice how important is any agency that can lift people 
 who have no theories admitting the possibility of inspiration, 
 into a practical realization of it. This is what art does. 
 Through the results of the subconscious mind, coalescing, 
 as we shall find by-and-by, with those of the conscious 
 mind, it everywhere surrounds the material with the halo of 
 the spiritual, causing the minds that will not even acknow- 
 ledge the existence of the latter, to enter upon a practical 
 experience of it in ideas, and to accept, when appearing in 
 the guise of imagination, what they would reject if presented 
 in its own lineaments. So in an age like our own, art may 
 do a large part of the work peculiar to religion. The artist 
 though not a seer always has within him the possibility of 
 being the seer's assistant. No wonder therefore that those 
 not versed in making discriminations should identify the 
 poets with the prophets. Perhaps the majority of all 
 expressions to which we attribute inspiration are, in their 
 form, poetical ; and there is no truth so exalted, so infinite, 
 eternal, absolute, that the artist, by reproducing the forms 
 about him, cannot suggest it to imagination; nor any truth 
 so spiritual and unfamiliar, or capable of being realized 
 in only so remote a future, that he cannot present this 
 truth in forms in which many minds, however prejudiced 
 and material their tendencies, will not be glad to welcome 
 it. — Idem, vii. 
 
 STANDARDS OF CRITICISM {see CRITICISM, EFFECTS OF, ORIG- 
 INALITY AND ECCENTRICITY, and TASTE, STANDARDS OF). 
 
 As a restdt of having or acknowledging no standard, 
 about all that criticism can attempt is to observe a poem, 
 24 
 
370 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 a painting, or a building, and praise it, in case it resembles 
 some other product of a like kind — say by a Tennyson, a 
 Corot, or some Greek or Gothic builder — which has been 
 previously praised by some other critic. Judgments 
 formed according to this method either exalt imitation in 
 production into artistic excellence, as well as imitation in 
 opinion into critical acumen; or else, because there seems 
 some defect in such conceptions, they confound in their 
 search for the opposite of imitation the indications of mere 
 eccentricity with those of genuine originality. Meantime, 
 the art either imitative or eccentric that is developed by 
 such conceptions continues to prove satisfactory to men 
 so long only as the temporary fashion that occasions it con- 
 tinues in vogue. There is not a library, or picture gallery, 
 or street, or campus of any size in this country, that is not 
 filled almost to overflowing with modern compositions 
 which were extravagantly praised by the foremost authori- 
 ties of a few years ago, but which to-day are acknowledged 
 to be well-nigh worthless as specimens of art; and the 
 sorriest feature of the condition is that this race toward 
 worthlessness is still going on between many upon whose 
 works enormous sums of money, to say nothing of un- 
 deserved and misguiding laudations, are now being lavishly 
 expended. — Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color, 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 So long as the author of this series of volumes, upon the 
 principle of "Live and let live," refrains, as he has always 
 consistently done, from personal attacks upon artists and 
 critics and patrons of art, to some of whom, in his own 
 conceptions, he is now very definitely referring, he cannot 
 be rightly accused of being willing to attain notoriety in 
 that easiest way possible in our own age, — at the expense 
 of others; even if he cannot expect to be recognized as 
 one who, in all that he has written, has been mainly anxious 
 to be helpful to them. But whatever they may think, he is 
 certain that he will prove helpful in reality, in case he suc- 
 ceeds in doing no more than directing attention to the fact 
 that the conditions of art that have just been described must 
 always continue so long as opinion or performance is based 
 upon the conception that there can be no approximately 
 definite standards. And if this be so, it is not being theoreti- 
 cal but practical, to maintain that in art, as in all other 
 departments of life, these standards can be discovered. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 371 
 
 We can find that upon which everything else on the earth's 
 surface rests, if only we can get down deep enough. We 
 can find the basic method of art, if only we can do the 
 same. To find this, has been the object of these volumes. 
 Nor is it assuming too much to hope that the physiological 
 as well as the psychical investigations of the present day 
 have been carried so far that no further discoveries, much 
 as they may add by way of confirmation to the theories 
 here unfolded, will necessitate any material change in their 
 general trend. — Idem, xxvi. 
 
 STUDY AS RELATED TO ARTISTIC INSTINCT. 
 
 We shall find here a noteworthy illustration of the fact, 
 often exemplified, that the last result reached through 
 artistic methods is not essentially different from that which 
 in certain circumstances antedates any study of art what- 
 ever. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, iii. 
 
 STYLE, NEEDED IN PRESENTING SUBSTANCE. 
 
 A howling mob summoned by a cry for help may bring 
 together substance to protect those in danger. But the 
 coming sound of martial music, and the tread of disciplined 
 troops, will be more likely to adjust the matter in a style 
 that will recall the feeling of nationality, the authority of 
 government, and the supremacy of law, thus reestablishing 
 permanent order. In this utilitarian age, we might get 
 along without certain poetical rhapsodies of literature; 
 but our practical arguments cannot afford to be without 
 those forms of language which, by giving stimulus and 
 suggestion, like the sparkle and flash that sometimes shoot 
 out from an electric current, light up the course of thought 
 on either side of the straight line of logic. It is not enough 
 to show men the grounds of an opinion. Grounds may 
 contain nothing beyond sand and gravel. To recognize 
 and realize and relish all that there is in the world of proof, 
 men need to know something of the glaciers of its moun- 
 tains, the verdure of its valleys, the fragrance of its flowers. 
 — Essay on Fundamentals of Education. 
 
 SUBCONSCIOUS MENTAL ACTION IN ART (sce olso GENIUS, 
 PERSONALITY, AND UNIVERSALITY, and SPIRIT OF THE AGE). 
 
 What is it to be affected by the ''zeit geist, " the "spirit of 
 the times, * * of which we so often hear ? What is it to be * * the 
 spokesman of one's age " ? What is it to be able, in the par- 
 ticular individualizations of art, to express the universal? 
 
372 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 What is it to be able, while depicting the phases of the pres- 
 ent, to foretell the unfoldings of the future? All these 
 things, every one admits to be characteristic of the great 
 artist. But what are they all, except so many proofs of 
 his possessing a subconscious mind, delicately suscep- 
 tible to influences exerted by other minds surrounding 
 him, and moving forward with him, — possibly, as in cases 
 of prevision, already borne beyond him? Finally, what 
 is the very substance of the art-product which we term a 
 work of imagination? What is it but a result, the general 
 outlines of which are taken from real objects or events in 
 the external world, yet the significant substance of which 
 is built out of the v/ell-nigh infinite variety of material which 
 has been stored in the subconscious mind? And when 
 we consider the forgotten experiences that have invariably 
 been brought to light, in order to be combined into the 
 result, we have no difficulty in recognizing that art is not 
 nature, but nature as mirrored in the mind, — mainly in the 
 subconscious rather than in the conscious, — a fact which 
 will be perceived to be true both of the simplest ele- 
 mentary exercise of comparison in which a single thing 
 perceived reminds one of another single thing previously per- 
 ceived, and equally true also of that more complex and 
 most difficult exercise of constructive imagination in which 
 a composite series of things perceived reminds one of 
 another composite series previously perceived. — The Rep- 
 resentative Significance of Form, vii. 
 
 SYMPATHIES, ART APPEALING TO THE. 
 
 Plays and novels that make us spend hours with people 
 such as we never meet, or meet only to avoid; and statues 
 and pictures equally objectionable, do not represent for us 
 real life as we know it, and cannot appeal, therefore, to our 
 sympathies as art should. — Essay on Art and Morals. 
 
 SYMPATHY AND ORIGINALITY. 
 
 One who is to preserve his own originality, and yet, 
 at the same time, derive from the forms and suggestions 
 of nature the same conceptions that others derive from 
 them; one who is to have the personal force to incorporate 
 in a form peculiar to himself that phase of truth, natural 
 or spiritual, which most readily commends itself to all, 
 must evidently be a man of sensibility, as well as of ration- 
 ality, a man able to sympathize as well as to infer. . . . 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 373 
 
 Only such a man can be controlled by his surroundings, and 
 yet manifest the freedom from control which is essential to 
 that play of the mind which is characteristic of all imagina- 
 tive results. — The Representative Significance of Form, xiv. 
 
 sympathy, appeal of art to {see personal and 
 sympathetic). 
 As human beings, men crave sympathy not merely with 
 the voluntary movements of their minds but often with 
 the involuntary. But the universe which surrounds them 
 is a constant mystery and source of speculation. They 
 believe that there are causes for its forms and movements, 
 spiritual meanings back of its material symbols. Yet 
 these are apprehended only vaguely, looming dimly, 
 as they do, from the regions of the unseen. Accordingly 
 when a work of art, produced by one whose subconscious 
 or hidden intellection is able to commune with these regions, 
 embodies these vague views of men in material forms, 
 appealing in such ways as to reveal to each one's conscious- 
 ness the truthfulness of his previous unformed apprehen- 
 sions, it is inevitable that his soul should experience 
 intense satisfaction. He feels that his own views have been 
 confirmed by another's intellect not alone but, at the same 
 time, have been felt also by another's heart. This recogni- 
 tion of the sympathetic appeal of art gives us one reason 
 why those susceptible to its influence — and who would 
 trust the critical insight or appreciation of any man who 
 was not? — are often, especially in early life, so completely 
 mastered by the significance of certain art-products. 
 Sometimes, in wandering through a gallery, they come 
 upon some painting or statue, and are so wonderfully 
 thrilled by it that they sit and watch it till the tears come, 
 and the room grows dim, and hours pass by, of which they 
 are unconscious; and when, in the end, they arouse them- 
 selves and leave the place, they wish for no further sight, 
 each other seeming vulgar and profane beside that holy 
 thing with which, for the time, they seem to have come in 
 contact. — Idem. 
 
 TASTE {see also culture as related to taste). 
 
 Mention, perhaps, should be made of taste, a term in 
 
 common use, indicative of that within the mind enabling 
 
 one to recognize an artistic effect, and to judge in some 
 
 way of its quality. The term originated in an adaptation 
 
374 ^N ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 to a feeling in the mind of that which can be actually experi- 
 enced in only one of the senses, and this a lower sense. As 
 originally used, too, taste indicated a passive state; but 
 even when referring to the lower sense it may indicate an 
 active. A cook whose taste is good can prepare a dish to 
 the taste of others. In a similar way, in art, the word may 
 indicate a man's appreciation and also his application of the 
 laws of beauty. Again, when referring to the lower sense, 
 men are said to have a natural and a cultivated taste; and 
 the same is true with reference to their attitude toward 
 beauty. 
 
 As applied to the whole range of artistic effects, the rela- 
 tion of taste to the aesthetic nature seems to be precisely 
 that of conscience to the moral nature, and of judgment to 
 the intellectual. Enlighten a man's soul, his conscience 
 will prompt to better actions; increase his wisdom, his judg- 
 ment will give better decisions. According to the same 
 analogy, cultivate his aesthetic nature, — i. e.y improve the 
 accuracy of his ear or eye, his knowledge of the different 
 appearances of life, or of modes of each life, — and his taste 
 will be cultivated and improved. He may never reach a 
 position where he can know what is absolutely beautiful 
 any more than what is absolutely right or wise; but he may 
 be constantly approaching nearer such a knowledge. 
 Hence, as applied to art, the old adage, "De gustibus non 
 est disputandum, " is not, in every sense, true. — Essentials 
 of Esthetics, ii. 
 
 TASTE, DISCREPANCIES IN, JUDGING OF HUMAN PROPORTIONS. 
 
 The fact that the whole human form and every part of it 
 owes the beauty which we recognize in it largely to its 
 representation of a certain phase of significance, furnishes 
 the best possible explanation for those discrepancies in 
 taste, which are nowhere more apparent than in the judg- 
 ments which different persons, equally cultivated, form 
 with reference to precisely the same human proportions. 
 These judgments differ because men differ in their views of 
 adaptability and fitness, and in the recollections which 
 they associate with persons characterized by certain 
 features; but more than all, because they differ in their 
 feelings of companionship with those possessing traits 
 which these features represent. Owing to one or the 
 other of these reasons, there are, for all of us, certain forms 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 375 
 
 SO adjusting themselves into the framework of vision and 
 mind that they fit into what men term their ideals as into 
 a vise, and hold sympathy spellbound. Certain movements 
 in these forms seem regulated to such a rhythm that, in 
 unison with it, all our currents of vein and nerve leap from 
 the heart and brain and thrill along their courses. They 
 do so very likely because of the operation of those universal 
 laws of vibration, the connection between which and the 
 effects of beauty was suggested in Chapter XII., and also in 
 Appendix I. of "Art in Theory." But the exact reason lies 
 deeper in nature than any plummet dropped by human 
 means can fathom. We cannot know the cause any more 
 than what, when all conductors are in place, speeds the 
 impulse of an electric current. We only know that a reason 
 exists at all because of the results which we experience. 
 Just as certain organs of the ear or eye respond and glow 
 with a sense of complete freedom and delight in the presence 
 of certain harmonious elements or combinations of sounds 
 or sights, so does the spirit as a whole. There may be some 
 so constituted physically, or so incapable of analyzing what 
 they feel, that they confound this apprehension of beauty, 
 which only we are now considering, with something less 
 pure and elevating. But those who have never made 
 their souls the servants of their bodies, and whose aesthetic 
 as well as ethical natures have, therefore, developed nor- 
 mally, are aware that the influence which flows from 
 beauty and beauty alone is different in kind from any- 
 thing debasing, and allied to that which is wholly spiritual. 
 It is not without strength in extreme youth, nor lost in 
 old age, and in its power to give delight and even to arouse 
 romance, it is stronger, often, when exerted by man upon 
 man and woman upon woman, than when exerted by one 
 upon another of another sex. These aesthetic effects, when 
 they reveal their sources through the outward forms in which 
 they are expressed and embodied, do this mainly through 
 what we term the proportions. What if these latter in them- 
 selves be merely a collection of like or related measurements ? 
 Is this not exactly what we should expect of anything the 
 effects of which can be ultimately traced to vibrations? 
 Cannot the same be affirmed not only of the minute waves 
 that underlie results in melody and harmony of tone, but even 
 of the larger waves of rhythm? And, if without rhythm 
 there can be no effective music or poetry, how should 
 
376 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 there be effective painting or sculpture without proportion? 
 — Proportion and Harmony, vii. 
 
 TASTE, STANDARDS OF, IN ART {see also CRITICISM, EFFECTS 
 OF, and STANDARDS OF CRITICISM). 
 
 Just as moral or intellectual character is shown by the 
 way in which the balance is maintained between conflicting 
 material and spiritual motives appealing to the conscience or 
 the judgment, so artistic character is shown by the way in 
 which the balance is preserved between the physiological 
 and psychological requirements of art. To a great extent, 
 as has been shown, the former requirement follows fixed 
 natural laws, as is the case, in fact, with everything merely 
 material; but the latter requirement depends upon the 
 range of thought and feeling characteristic of the mind of 
 the individual artist as a result of his temperament or ex- 
 perience. While therefore two artists may equally preserve 
 the balance of which mention has just been made, they 
 can never do it in exactly the same way. The psycho- 
 logical contribution, in each case, must be different. It 
 seems to be mainly for this reason that some argue that 
 there can be no standard of taste. But the same kind of 
 logic would lead one to conclude that there can be no 
 standard of right for conscience or judgment. It is un- 
 doubtedly a fact that moral and intellectual standards are 
 actually accepted to an extent and in a sense that is not 
 true of those of taste. But why is this the fact? — Why 
 but because the decisions of conscience and judgment 
 lead to actions; and actions always have some tendency 
 to become injurious to others. Therefore, for mutual 
 protection, men have agreed to accept conventional codes 
 and creeds, and to abide by them. Artistic taste, on the 
 contrary, does not, as a rule, lead to actions, or at least 
 not directly; and accordingly it is not supposed to be injurious 
 and is not treated as such. In it the expression of person- 
 ality, and with this of originality, is left unfettered. Spiritu- 
 ally considered, the artist is almost the only freeman. But 
 the fact that he is this is due, more than to anything else, 
 to the lucky accident of his not happening to be engaged 
 upon that which has a direct practical, utilitarian bearing. 
 There is nothing in the condition to rid him of the obligation 
 to endeavor, at least, to discover and to fulfil certain artistic 
 principles, any more than the fact of living where no con- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 377 
 
 ventional creeds or codes had been framed, would rid one of 
 the obligation to endeavor, at least, to discover and to fulfil 
 the principles of truth and righteousness. — Art in Theory ^ 
 
 XIV. 
 
 TASTE, WHEN DEGENERATE. 
 
 What kind of taste is being cultivated to-day?' It is safe 
 to say that, twenty-five years ago, no American publishers 
 of respectable standing would have allowed their imprint 
 to appear on the same page with the artistic vulgarities 
 which our foremost firms are now flaunting upon one's 
 eyes from the posters and even covers of their periodi- 
 cals; nor, if so flaunted, would any one, old enough to live 
 outside a nursery, have looked at such effects a second 
 time. But now they are supposed to commend them- 
 selves to the taste of several millions of people, many 
 of whom, after the schooling that they have received through 
 gradations downward to the present low level, are actually 
 expected to think them interesting and, if critics, to speak 
 of them as artistic! Nor is there any commercial excuse 
 for this abuse of artistic opportunity. It seems to be owing 
 to sheer esthetic wantonness irresponsibly debauching 
 popular taste. — Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as 
 Representative Arts, xii. 
 
 TEACHERS AND BEES. 
 
 Not all the bees in a hive have to do with developing the 
 queen-bee. Yet one appears every season, and this because 
 of the work of all. Meantime, they all have also contri- 
 buted to the provisioning, the comfort, the prosperity, and 
 the sweetness of the whole corporate life. So with teachers 
 of drawing in primary schools. — Essay on Teaching in 
 Drawing. 
 
 TEACHERS, QUALIFICATIONS OF, IN ELOCUTION. 
 
 Some decry all physicians on the ground that they kill 
 off their patients. But this is true, as a rule, only of 
 quacks. There are certain physicians who benefit their 
 patients; and the same is true of some elocutionists. If 
 those called upon to select the latter would only exercise a 
 little common-sense, it might be true of almost all of them. 
 A man's credentials for such a position should be examined. 
 Has he studied the art, and with whom? Has he had 
 experience in teaching, and with what results ? More than 
 
 'This was printed in 1895. 
 
378 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 that, what kind of a man is he in himself? Has he good 
 judgment and insight? Has he modesty, so that he will 
 give his pupils merely what they need, not what he thinks 
 that he himself needs in order to increase their regard for 
 him? Above all, has he the artistic temperament? — that 
 supremacy of instinct over reflection and that flexibility, 
 mental and physical, which enable a man to remain master 
 of himself and of his material, notwithstanding any amount 
 of the latter with which instruction and information may 
 have surrounded him? How does he himself, in his own 
 reading and speaking, manifest the results of the system 
 that he purposes to teach? — Essay on Elocution in the 
 Theological Seminary. 
 
 TECHNIQUE {see FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE, FORM, STUDY OF, 
 FORM VS. SIGNIFICANCE, and SIGNIFICANCE VS. FORM). 
 
 In the degree in which he comes to take an interest in 
 his work, he will begin to perceive the fascination that there 
 may be in the study of form as form; and no man ever 
 became an artist or able to appreciate art in any department, 
 until he had begun to perceive this. The young seldom 
 perceive it. They are more apt to feel suppressed than 
 stimulated by talk with reference to fine discriminations in 
 the selection of words, or artistic ingenuity in the arrange- 
 ment of them. Always ready to admit in a general way the 
 value of style, in trying to detect its qualities for themselves 
 they are apt to use tools too big and bungling to discover 
 any except superficial excellences. Like the savage, they 
 stand agaze at the huge, the loud, and the coarse; they fail to 
 notice the delicate, the gentle, and the fine. They believe 
 in the realm of the telescope, not of the microscope; in 
 that which can wing itself among the clouds, not in that 
 which must watch and walk while keeping the motive 
 power of flight alive. They forget that the eagle has eyes, 
 as well as pinions; and that the keenness of his sight does 
 not prevent him from soaring, but prevents him, when he 
 soars, from losing himself. — Essay on the Literary Artist 
 and Elocution. 
 
 TECHNIQUE AND NATURE (see FORM AND SIGNIFICANCE and 
 NATURAL EFFECTS REPRODUCED IN ART). 
 
 When technique is mastered, and its results become auto- 
 matic, they, themselves, though not those of nature in its pri- 
 mary sense, become those of a second or acquired nature; 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 379 
 
 and, in this condition, the highest compliment possible 
 for them, as well as the highest tribute to their success, is 
 given when they are termed natural. — Essay on the Function 
 of Technique. 
 
 TECHNIQUE IN PAINTING SUBORDINATED TO REPRESENTATION. 
 
 When one enters a gallery, the work of the great master 
 is most likely to be that which, at first glance, might be 
 mistaken for a mirror reflecting nature outside the window; 
 in other words, a work, in which technique, however perfect 
 in itself, has been carefully subordinated to the requirements 
 of representation. — Idem. 
 
 TECHNIQUE IN POETRY. 
 
 It is not strange that one who has thoroughly at com- 
 mand the resources of the music of verse like Swinburne, 
 or of suggestive ellipses like Browning, or of picturesque 
 details like Morris, should occasionally, in the heat and 
 exuberance of his creative moods, push his peculiar excel- 
 lence altogether beyond the limits of legitimate art; but 
 it is strange that the critics who make it their business to 
 form cool and exact estimates of literary work, should so 
 seldom have sufficient insight to detect, or courage to reveal, 
 wherein lie the faults that injure the style of each, and how 
 they may be remedied. How can criticism be of any use 
 except so far as in a kindly way it can aid in the perfecting 
 of that on which it turns its scrutiny? And yet it is doubt- 
 ful whether, amid all the eulogy and abuse which have 
 greeted all the works of Robert Browning, any one, in 
 private or in print, has ever told him plainly what those 
 faults are — all so easy to correct, — but for which the man 
 with the greatest poetic mind of the age would be — what 
 now he is not — its greatest poet. And if criticism of this 
 kind is needed by authors who have attained his rank, how 
 much more by those who, with the imitative methods of 
 inexperience, are always prone to copy unconsciously, and 
 usually to exaggerate, the weak rather than the strong 
 points of the masters! Many a young writer, doing this 
 at that critical period of his life when a lack of stimulus and 
 appreciation may wholly check one's career, has failed, 
 notwithstanding great merits. All his ability in other 
 directions has not compensated for his ignorance of the 
 requirements of poetic technique. — Poetry as a Representa' 
 live Art, xiv. 
 
38o AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 TEMPERAMENT AS INFLUENCING ART-PRODUCTS {See alsO 
 ARTISTIC VS. SCIENTIFIC MENTAL ACTION, and GENIUS). 
 
 The artist is one who, owing to temperament or training, 
 is able, to an exceptional extent, to manifest in speech or 
 action the results of his subconscious intellection. What 
 does he obtain through this form of intellection? Sur- 
 misals, which, sometimes, as has been shown, correspond 
 to the absolute truth. Nevertheless, even if they do, he 
 obtains this truth in those forms only in which his own 
 temperament, as influenced by his training, is able to in- 
 terpret, and, according to the method indicated, to frame into 
 an ideal the scenes or sounds that suggest the truth. And 
 what does he communicate? Nothing again but his own 
 surmisals, interpretations, or ideals. Moreover, if he be a 
 genuine artist, producing nothing but effects which represent 
 those of nature, he communicates his surmisals in such forms 
 only as cause others, as a result of their own imaginings, to 
 make similar surmisals. The artist therefore interprets na- 
 ture according to his own temperament, and causes others to 
 interpret it as he does. — The Representative Significance of 
 Form, XIV. 
 
 THEORIES, MADE TO SUIT OUR OWN PRACTICE. 
 
 The truth is that art-theories, like religious creeds, are 
 framed not so much for the purpose of adjusting conditions 
 to the demands of truth, as of advocating the conditions, 
 whether of truth or of falsehood, which the framers recognize 
 to be their own. The majority of us, though usually uncon- 
 scious of the fact, would rather keep all the world below us 
 than, by pointing to a level higher than our own, risk having 
 someone discovered there who, instead of ourselves, has 
 attained it. — Essay, on the Function of Technique. 
 
 THOROUGHNESS, AMERICA'S NEED AND MUSIC'S INFLUENCE 
 
 ON. 
 
 Thoroughness as a characteristic of mental process 
 or material production is very greatly needed among our 
 people. We have qualities that, in certain directions, seem 
 sometimes capable of taking its place, — an unusual develop- 
 ment of intuition, insight, ingenuity, and power of initiative. 
 Nine times out of ten, perhaps, when an American jumps 
 to a conclusion, he can make a successful landing; but the 
 wise ought always to bear in mind the fact that a single 
 slip, at a critical moment, may lose a whole race. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 381 
 
 Is there nothing to awaken reflection in the fact that 
 Germany, the one country in which there has been not only 
 the highest but the most universal development of musical 
 culture, is also the one country universally acknowledged 
 to stand without a rival as an exemplification of the results 
 of thoroughness in all forms of scholarship? Is there not 
 something in this fact to suggest a patriotic as well as an 
 aesthetic reason for desiring to promote in our own land 
 every form in which music can be studied? — Essay on 
 Music as Related to Other Arts. 
 
 TIME (see REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS IN DURATION, and 
 
 rhythm). 
 
 TRADITIONALISM AND MATERIALISM, AS AFFECTED BY ART 
 
 (see also religion aided by art and spiritual 
 
 SUGGESTIVENESS OF ART). 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that, be- 
 cause not directly an aid to religion, art is not indirectly 
 so, and this even where strictly confined to its own sphere. 
 In ages like our own, when men rely chiefly upon the 
 guidance of the conscious mind, it is extremely diffictdt 
 for them to be brought to realize that there is any trust- 
 worthy guidance attributable to the action of the sub- 
 conscious mind. Those in this state may be divided into 
 two classes. One class of them holds that many years ago 
 this inspirational form of guidance prevailed, but that 
 now it does not. They believe in inspiration that was, 
 but not in inspiration that is. They prize highly that which 
 was once received in this way. But, so far as concerns 
 a similar method of receiving the truth now, their own 
 spiritual instincts are not allowed to guide them even to 
 the extent — which might involve no great changes of 
 opinion — of interpreting the spirit of the old according to 
 the form of the new. The result is what is termed tradi- 
 tionalism; and it is needless to argue that the tendency of 
 this is to cause the mind to hold on to that which has 
 formerly been conceived, and to hold on so firmly as often 
 to be prejudicial to development, and even to activity, of 
 thought. The other class maintains that there never was, 
 and never can be anything worth regarding in this inspi- 
 rational form of guidance. They deem nothing trustworthy 
 except that which results solely from the action of the 
 conscious mind. This leads to what is termed materialism ; 
 
382 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 and, so far as it has its perfect work, it is still more deaden- 
 ing to effort and ideality than is traditionalism. — The Re- 
 presentative Significance of Form, vii. 
 
 TRAINING, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL (see also DRILL, INSPIRED, 
 PRACTICE, ITS EFFECTS, and SKILL, HOW ACQUIRED). 
 
 Training can do much more for artistic development 
 than some suppose. It can produce facility not only 
 in outward expression, giving the singer, orator, or actor a 
 flexible voice or a graceful body, or the musician, painter, 
 or sculptor dexterity in the use of fingers, brush, or chisel. 
 It can produce facility in the methods of inward prepara- 
 tion for expression, enabling the mind to draw at will 
 from the subconscious resources that which is the subject- 
 matter of artistic invention and inspiration. — The Repre- 
 sentative Significance of Forniy xiii. 
 
 TRUTH (see ART AND BEAUTY, and NATURE TRUTH TO). 
 TRUTH AND THOUGHT REVEALED IN NATURE. 
 
 Here is a rose-bush. When it begins to grow, it is small 
 and weak and simple. As it develops, it becomes large and 
 strong and complex. So does every other plant in nature; 
 so does a man ; so does a nation ; so does all humanity ; so, 
 as far as we can know, does the entire substance that develops 
 for the formation of our globe. One mode of operation, one 
 process, we find everywhere. If this be so, then to the 
 ear skilled to listen to the voice in nature, what is all the 
 universe but a mighty auditorium — in which every tale is 
 reechoed endlessly beneath, about, and above, through 
 every nook of its grand crypts and aisles and arches? But, 
 again, if all created things bear harmonious reports with 
 reference to the laws controlling them, what inference 
 must follow from this? In view of it, what else can a 
 man do but attribute all these processes, one in mode, to 
 a single source? — and, more than this, what can he do but 
 accept the import of these processes, the methods indi- 
 cated in them, the principles exemplified by them, as 
 applicable to all things, — in other words, as revelations of 
 the universal truth? So the poet finds not only thought 
 in nature, but also truth. — Poetry as a Representative Art, 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 UGLINESS IN ART (see ART AND BEAUTY). 
 
 Nor need it be supposed that what has been said en- 
 dorses the mistaken view that any subject which is "natu- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 383 
 
 ral" is legitimate for artistic treatment. The truth seems 
 to be that ugliness, simply because it is repulsive, is not 
 legitimate in art except so far as, by way of contrast, 
 as in the case of shadows which throw that which they 
 surround into brighter relief, the ugliness enhances the 
 beauty to which it is kept in manifest subordination. 
 What the particular phases of this beauty shall be must 
 be determined, of course, by the taste of the artist. But 
 their effectiveness will depend upon his powers of observa- 
 tion and his study of the analogies of nature. Beauty is 
 never so attractive as when it appears in the dignity attach- 
 ing to the creative proportions there; truth is never so 
 operative as when it manifests the sanction of the laws 
 of the Creator that are there embodied. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, xii. 
 
 UNITIES, THE LAW OF, IN DRAMATIC ART. 
 
 Harmony of effects among different elements of signifi- 
 cance in form as they appeal to recollection, association, 
 or suggestion, is due mainly to perceiving that the objects 
 made to go together are such as we are accustomed to 
 think of as going together. For instance, this phase of 
 harmony is fulfilled in an opera or poem, when all the 
 scenes or events representing a certain country or period 
 conform strictly to the conditions of each. It was this 
 that was sought to be fulfilled in the old law of criticism 
 ascribed to the Greeks, enjoining that a drama should 
 contain only as much as might be supposed to take place in 
 the time given to the representation, or, at most, in one day, 
 and in one place, and with one kind of action, by which 
 latter was meant with either tragic or comic situations, 
 but not with both. This "law of the unities" of time, 
 place, and action, as it is called, although it cannot be 
 applied universally, is based at least upon a true principle. 
 Brevity, local color, and directness are always elements of 
 artistic excellence. — Art in Theory, xiii. 
 
 However acceptable this "law of the unities" may have 
 been to the ancient Greeks, who were less interested than 
 people of our day in the analysis of motives and the develop- 
 ment of character, it does not allow sufficient comprehen- 
 siveness for the purposes of modem literary art, least of all 
 of the dramatic. Anything in art is right which enhances 
 an effect legitimate to the product in which it is used. In 
 
384 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 order to show the results of the influences at work in motives 
 and character, length of time is often indispensable. So, 
 too, is change of place; while the incongruous association 
 of tragedy and comedy in the action, not only prevents 
 monotony, but, as universally in the case of contrast, 
 increases the distinctive impression of both. Imaginative 
 people never have so strong an inclination to laugh as at a 
 funeral, and tears never flow so freely as immediately after 
 a burst of merriment. — The Genesis of Art-Form, ix. 
 
 UNITY, EFFECT OF, IN MUSIC. 
 
 Where consecutive single notes are used, we are best satis- 
 fied if all or a large number of those that are essential to 
 the same melody are produced by an instrument of the 
 same kind, thus fulfilling the principle, of putting like 
 elements of sound together. For instance, even were it 
 possible, we should hardly take pleasure in hearing a first 
 note of a melody sounded on a violin, a second on a flute, 
 a third on a pianoforte, etc., and this because the effect 
 would lack congruity, which is the first condition enabling 
 the mind to compare the qualities of successive tones, and 
 thus perceive unity in them. If, however, instead of 
 consecutive single notes, we hear consecutive chords, then, 
 provided the same part be played in consecutive chords by 
 the same instrument, the more numerous the kinds of instru- 
 ments used, the more pleasure, as a rule, do we receive. 
 A chorus, accompanied by an orchestra, is usually more 
 enjoyable than a single voice accompanied by a piano, and 
 the latter is more enjoyable than a voice unaccompanied by 
 any instrument. The reason is that in the chord of the 
 orchestra the ear recognizes, and is able to compare, a much 
 larger number of like or allied effects. Moreover, as all 
 these instruments are sounded in successive chords, their 
 music continues to preserve from note to note the same 
 general compound quality, notwithstanding the variety 
 caused by differences of pitch in the notes of each chord and 
 of successive chords. It is because the effect of tmity,^ 
 together with that of the greatest possible variety, is at- 
 tained in this complex form of music as in no other, that the 
 orchestra and chorus combined is sometimes supposed to 
 exemplify the highest possibilities of the art. — Rhythm and 
 Harmony in Poetry and Music, xiii. 
 
 * See page 89 of this volume. 
 
The Laocoon Group 
 See pages 73, 82, 88, 162, 230-232, 280, 281, 309,318-321 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 385 
 
 UNITY IN iESTHETIC SYSTEMS NECESSITATES A COMMON 
 ART-CHARACTERISTIC. 
 
 If for instance we emphasize the fact that art reproduces 
 the appearances of nature, we thrust sculpttire and painting 
 into prominence. We term these "the fine arts," and 
 music or poetry on the one hand, and architecture on the 
 other, are classed in the same company only by a doubtful 
 courtesy which allows them to cling to the skirts of the 
 former. If, again, we emphasize the fact that the arts are 
 human, in that they are means of communicating thought 
 and feeling, then literature and poetry are unduly exalted. 
 Nor does the emphasis of either fact do justice either to 
 music or to architecture. But is it not surmisable that 
 each of these facts should result from some other fact, and 
 that this fact should be equally recognizable in the repro- 
 duction of forms in nature and in the expression of the 
 formative thought and feeling in the artist's mind? If so, 
 is it not evident that we can classify all the arts according 
 to the one fact, and arrange them according to the influence 
 upon each art of each of the other two facts, and that, thus 
 doing, we can find a place somewhere where each art, when 
 so arranged, can stand without danger of having the qualities 
 that render it artistic either exaggerated or belittled? — 
 Art in Theory, iv. 
 
 UNITY IN ALL ART-WORKS {see CLASSIFICATION AS THE 
 FOREMOST ART-METHOD, and PAGE 89). 
 
 UNITY IN ARCHITECTURE, SUGGESTED BY CONTINUITY. 
 
 Every one must have observed occasionally in connection 
 with mouldings and buttresses, with divisions and cappings 
 of windows and porches, with external and internal arches 
 and ridgepoles of roofs, gables, and ceilings, but especially 
 in connection with the sides of towers and spires, and with 
 innumerable ornamental details, outlines that seem to 
 suggest, at least, a desire to point the thought away to 
 another feature of principal interest with which they are 
 organically connected. . . . Undoubtedly it would add to 
 the effects of buildings if more were made of this possi- 
 bility, as might easily be done by bestowing a little more care 
 upon the arrangements of the necessary lines and arches. 
 Certain it is that, in any art, the mind, in glancing along 
 in the direction to which an outline thus related points, 
 takes pleasure in finding other lines continuing it or converg- 
 
 9S 
 
386 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 ing somewhere with it, and, even without consciousness of 
 the reason, derives from this arrangement impressions both 
 of principality^ and unity ^ in connection with the whole, 
 which nothing else could give. — The Genesis of Art-Form, 
 XI. 
 
 VASE {see ELLIPTIC lanceolate). 
 VENUS {see representation in sculpture). 
 
 VERSE AN ELEMENT OF ARTISTIC UNITY. 
 
 What is verse? A little reflection will reveal that every 
 known phase of it is a method of causing the flow of the 
 words as they present themselves in time, to be interrupted 
 sufficiently and with sufficient regularity to convey an 
 impression like that produced when like objects appear side 
 by side in space. Lines, feet, alliteration, assonance, 
 rhyme, — all have the effect of retarding or preventing an 
 absolute change; and thus of causing the composition to 
 manifest not movement only, but unity of movement. 
 Consider, for instance, the lyric. Its thought usually moves 
 on very impetuously. The artistic requirement in its mode 
 of expression, therefore, is that it manifest, in some way, 
 that there is unity in the movement. But how can this be 
 done better than by arranging the sounds in certain like 
 groups, indicating unity of method? And how can we 
 find like groups more clearly indicated than in the regular 
 recurrence of accents, as in feet, or of tones as in allitera- 
 tion or assonance, and especially as in rhymes at the ends 
 of lines. These latter, in particular, cause the thought, 
 at like intervals, to pause, as it were, and to connect the 
 sound heard with another like sound that preceded it. A 
 similar impression is also conveyed when successive stanzas 
 end with a like refrain or chorus. . . . Without them, the 
 thought of the lyric might often seem to roll forward as 
 lifelessly and with as little evidence of organism as a log. 
 These make it step and fly, — give it a regularly recurring 
 motion like that of a living creature. — The Representative 
 Significance of Form, xxii. 
 
 VERSE, CLASSIC VS. MODERN {see ACCENT and rhythm). 
 
 It may be asked, have we not derived our system of 
 versification from that of the classic languages, and was 
 this not based upon quantity rather than upon accent? 
 Certainly; but, while observing these facts let us observe 
 
 » See page 89 of this volume. 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 387 
 
 also that the classic system was not an elementary but a 
 late development of rhythm. . . . Poetic measures, as 
 we have found, result, primarily, from force given to syl- 
 lables at regular intervals of duration. But careful observa- 
 tion will reveal that, as a rule, the application of this 
 force necessarily involves also an increase in the duration 
 of the accented syllable. This increase is made in speech 
 unconsciously ; in music it is made consciously ; and that this 
 was the case in the classic metres, furnishing one proof, 
 which is confirmed by others, that they were results of an 
 effort to intone verses — i. e., to make music of them. But 
 besides this let us notice another fact. As accent is 
 necessarily accompanied by an increase in quantity, it is 
 impossible that our own metres also, though determined 
 by accent, should not manifest some traces of the influence 
 of quantity. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, 11. 
 
 In constructing verse the Greeks and Romans subordinated 
 accent to quantity. Unlike ourselves, if in composing 
 they came to a word in which long quantity and the ordi- 
 nary accent did not go together, they seem always to have 
 been at liberty to disregard the accent, and occasionally, 
 too, they could change the quantity. In fact, they could 
 change both quantity and accent in order to produce a 
 rhythmic effect when chanting, analogous to that which 
 we produce when reading. Our poets, on the contrary, 
 have gone back to the primitive methods, antedating those 
 of Greece, and base the rhythms of their verse on the 
 accents of speech. The result, as compared with the 
 language of our prose, is more natural than that reached by 
 the other method ; and in its way is fully as artistic. Nor, in 
 other regards, is English inferior to the classic tongues in its 
 capabilities for artistic treatment. Owing to an extensive 
 use of terminations in nouns, articles, pronouns, adjectives, 
 and verbs, in order to indicate different grammatical rela- 
 tionships, the Greeks and Romans could change the order 
 of words in a sentence without changing its meaning. In 
 their language, "The dog ate the wolf," with slightly 
 varied terminations, could read, "The wolf ate the dog." 
 For this reason, they could alter their phraseology, in 
 order to accommodate it to the requirements of metre, as 
 is not possible for us ; and so far they had an advantage 
 over us. Nevertheless, for some reason, when they came 
 
388 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 to put their words into verse, as every schoolboy who 
 tries to scan knows, they produced a language which, 
 like the present French poetic diction, sounded unlike 
 that of conversation. Even supposing, with some scholars, 
 that in reading they did not scan their verses as we do now, 
 nor even chant them invariably, as some infer was the case, 
 their poetic language was not the same as their spoken 
 language. Aristotle tells us, when mentioning things 
 which it is legitimate for the poet to do, that he can invent 
 new words, that he can expand old ones, either by lengthen- 
 ing vowels or by adding syllables, that he can contract 
 them by shortening vowels or omitting syllables, and that 
 he can alter them in various other ways. Spenser and 
 others since him have applied similar methods to English 
 poetic diction; but, at present, such changes, except in 
 rare instances, are not considered admissible, and this 
 because they are recognized to be unnecessary. The fact 
 that they are not admissible in our language, and were 
 admissible in the classic languages, proves that, in one 
 regard at least, our language is superior to them as a 
 medium of metre. — Idem, ii. 
 
 In the classic languages metre was determined by the 
 quantities or relative lengths of the vowel-sounds or con- 
 sonant-sounds composing the syllables. Our own language 
 is not spelled phonetically, and therefore we fail to notice 
 the effect of similar elements in it. Yet they are present 
 to a greater extent than we ordinarily suppose, as will be 
 brought out clearly when we come to consider quantity, 
 especially that which is used in the English hexameter. 
 Any one acquainted with the subject, knows that it is a 
 mistake to hold that quantity has nothing whatever to 
 do with the movements of ovir metres, and an analogous 
 mistake, probably, would be made in supposing that the 
 emphasis of ordinary pronunciation had nothing whatever 
 to do with the classic metres. — Poetry as a Representative 
 Arty II. 
 
 verse, its genesis {sec poetry vs, music, genesis of 
 
 each). 
 We all must have noticed that a child too young to talk, 
 a foreigner using a language unknown to us, a friend speak- 
 ing at such a distance from us that his words are indistin- 
 guishable, can all reveal to us, with a certain degree of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 389 
 
 definiteness, the general tenor of their thoughts. Their 
 tones, aside from their words, enable us to understand 
 such facts as whether they are hurried or at leisiure, elated 
 or depressed, in earnest or indifferent, pleased or angered. 
 This is so because these facts are directly represented 
 by their intonations. Developed with design, these may 
 be made to resemble those of the foremost actors and 
 orators. Hence the art of elocution. Developed without 
 design, they instinctively come to imitate those of the 
 people with whom one most associates. Scotchmen, 
 Irishmen, Englishmen, and Americans can all be distin- 
 guished by the different ways in which they utter the same 
 phrases. No two of them will emphasize precisely alike a 
 simple expression such as "I can't go there to-day." 
 
 Not only men of different nations can be distinguished 
 thus, but even different individuals. Any one well known 
 to us can be recognized in the dark by what we term 
 his voice, by which we mean his method of using his voice ; 
 the way, peculiar to himself, of pausing at certain intervals 
 and hurrying at others, of sliding his sounds up and down 
 on certain syllables and phrases, and also, perhaps, of 
 giving in certain places an unusual stress or quality of tone. 
 AH these methods impress his individuality on everything 
 that he has to say. When he becomes a public speaker, 
 his peculiarities in these regards become still more marked. 
 Unconsciously, if not consciously, he develops them so that, 
 in his delivery, similar intonations recur with a certain 
 degree of regularity; in other words, he comes to have what 
 may be termed a rhythm and a tune of his own. The 
 reason why he comes to have these is, undoubtedly, . . . 
 owing to a natural tendency to economize labor. Just as the 
 swinging of the hands enables one to walk more easily, so 
 what may be termed the swinging of the tones enables one to 
 talk more easily. So, also, as we shall find by-and-bye, do 
 verse and measure, to which these intonations naturally 
 lead. The two together separate the words and syllables, 
 and make them accord with the natural actions of the 
 lungs and throat. 
 
 But let us waive this thought, until we reach it in its 
 proper place. Before the age of books those who prepared 
 literature published it by repeating it in public. Every 
 man who did this had, of course, his own peculiarities of 
 utterance, which, as he continued to repeat his produc- 
 
390 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 tions, he would cultivate and render more and more 
 peculiar; just as is the case to-day with the venders who 
 cry in our streets, the clerks who read in our courts, and 
 the priests who intone the services in our churches. These 
 peculiarities, moreover, would be shown not only in the 
 elocution of the reciter, but in the arrangement of his 
 words and sentences, so as to fit them to his elocution. 
 At the outset, every literary man would have his own 
 style of delivery and composition, and confine himself to 
 it. But after a little, just as men of the same districts, 
 and preachers and exhorters of the same religious sects — 
 Quakers, Methodists, or Episcopalians — imitate one an- 
 other; so these public reciters would drift into imitation. 
 Before long, too, it would be found that one style of expres- 
 sion, or form of words, was better suited for one set of 
 ideas, and another for another set; so, in time, the same 
 reciter would come to use different styles or forms for 
 different subjects. Only a slight knowledge of history is 
 needed in order to prove that this is what has actually 
 taken place. Pindaric metre, and possibly Homeric, as 
 also the Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas of the Greeks, were 
 used first by the poets whose names they bear; but to-day 
 they are used by many others who find them the best forms 
 through which to express what they wish to write. 
 
 But to return to our line of thought. A further develop- 
 ment in the direction already indicated, would cause these 
 reciters after a time to use versification, so that their 
 rhythms and the variations in them might be more clearly 
 marked; and still later, that the precise length of their 
 verses might be apparent, as well as to assist the memory 
 in retaining them, they would use rhymes. Further 
 developments in the direction of rhythm and tune, intro- 
 ducing greater variety in both, and making the tones more 
 and more sustained, would lead to the singing of songs — 
 that is, to poetry set to musical melody. — Idem, ii. 
 
 VERSE, ITS PHYSICAL BASIS (see ACCENT and rhythm) . 
 
 The elements of all verse as well as of elocutionary forms, 
 can be traced to the physical requirements of the organs 
 of speech, and to these not as they are used in singing, but, 
 distinctively, in talking. One can sing without suggesting 
 any thing that can be developed into verse or rhythm; but 
 it is impossible for him to talk, without suggesting what can 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 391 
 
 be developed into both. In order to recognize the truth of 
 this statement, we have merely to listen to a man talking. 
 As we do so, two characteristics of speech will at once 
 attract our attention. One is the pause or cessation of 
 sound, following groups of syllables which form phrases 
 or sentences, containing anywhere from two to a dozen 
 words; the other is the accent, given to every second, third, 
 or fourth syllable. . . . 
 
 The pause results, primarily, from the construction of 
 the human lungs; the accent, from that of the human 
 throat. The speaker checks his utterance in order to 
 breathe; he accents it because the current of sound — in 
 talking, but not in singing — flows through the vocal pas- 
 sages in a manner similar to that in which fluid is emptied 
 from the neck of a bottle — i. e., with what may be termed 
 alternate active and passive movements. . . . 
 
 It is only necessary to observe these facts in order to 
 recognize that the line in verse, at the end of which, when 
 regularly constructed, the reader necessarily pauses, is an 
 artistic development of the phrase, which we find in all 
 natural conversation. In fact, Aristotle, in his "Rhetoric," 
 seems to hint at some such a development in prose, for he 
 says the period must be divided into clauses, easily pro- 
 nounced at a breath el dvixvsuaToq. It is generally ac- 
 knowledged that the principal mental process involved in 
 art-construction is comparison. This causes all men, both 
 consciously and unconsciously, both for convenience and 
 pleasure, to take satisfaction in putting like with like. 
 The moment this tendency is applied to groups of sylla- 
 bles separated by pauses, it leads men to place, if possible, 
 a like number of syllables in each group, and thus have 
 between the pauses like intervals of time. But an arrange- 
 ment of this kind is the primary characteristic of verse. — 
 Ideniy II. 
 
 VERSE, MELODY AND HARMONY OF {see HARMONY IN POETRY, 
 REPRESENTATIVE EFFECTS OF PITCH, and PITCH). 
 
 The poetic effects, corresponding to the rising and falling 
 of the voice, especially as used in the inflections, will now 
 be examined. There is a sense in which these movements 
 of the voice enter into the pronunciation of every syllable 
 containing more than one letter-sound. In uttering, for 
 example, the word an, the sound of the a is at a different 
 
392 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 pitch from that of the n. In talking rapidly, however, 
 the two sounds seem usually uttered, not in succession but 
 simultaneously. Their effects, therefore, when combined, 
 are analogous, not to those of musical melody, but of har- 
 mony, and of these much more closely than at first might 
 be supposed. In flexible, well-trained voices, belonging 
 to those familiar with the relations of musical tones, there 
 is a tendency to sound the two at such intervals of pitch 
 from each other as to form a true musical chord. One 
 reason why vocal culture increases the sweetness and 
 resonance of the speaking voice is because it enables one to 
 sound distinctly all the elements of tone needed, in order 
 to produce this speech-harmony. 
 
 The rising and falling of the voice with which we have 
 to deal now, however, are not those subtle ones allying 
 speech to harmony, but those more obvious ones which 
 give it a very apparent melody. The effects in poetry 
 corresponding to elocutionary inflections, are produced 
 by the same arrangements of the syllables in the line that 
 we have already noticed when considering metre. In our 
 language, as a rule, — a rule which the elocutionist, of 
 course, can violate in order to produce what for him are 
 the more important effects of delivery, — an accented sylla- 
 ble is sounded on a key higher than an unaccented one. 
 To illustrate this, in the ordinary pronunciation of cdnjure, 
 meaning to practise magical arts, the con is sounded higher 
 than the jure; but in conjUre meaning to summon solemnly, 
 the con is sounded lower. Therefore, if a line of poetry 
 end with an accented syllable, or have what is termed a 
 masculine ending, the voice in pausing on this, as it generally 
 does at the end of a line, will pause, as a rule, on a key higher 
 than that on which it has uttered the preceding syllable. 
 
 For similar reasons, if a line close with an unaccented 
 syllable, having what is termed di feminine ending; or begin 
 with an accented syllable, the effect is that of a constant re- 
 petition of the falling inflection. In fact, the Greeks, though 
 arriving at their result through a different process, actually 
 termed lines ending thus catcdectic or falling. — Idem, ix. 
 
 Probably few have noticed to what an extent pitch enters 
 as a factor into the effects of poetry. They know in a 
 general way, of course, that in early modes of communi- 
 cating thought, intonations, like gestures, were almost as 
 significant as words; but they do not realize that the 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 393 
 
 $ame is true in our own day, least of all that changes in 
 pitch are and always must be elements entering into the 
 significance of the effects produced by poetic rhythm. 
 They know, again, if at all acquainted with the history of 
 the art, that there was a time when poetry was associated 
 with both dancing and music. It was so, as we are told, 
 in the time of King David, who, on one occasion, at least, 
 danced as well as sang his psalms before the ark. In 
 Greece, not only lyric but dramatic poetry was chanted, 
 and often accompanied by the Ij^re. As late as the sixteenth 
 century, declamation accompanied by music, flourished 
 in England and in Italy. In the latter country it then 
 passed into the opera, which did not follow, as some sup- 
 pose, but preceded all that is noteworthy in the develop- 
 ment of the pure music, unaccompanied by words, of 
 modem times. In our own day, however, when poetry is 
 merely read, the movements of the waltz, the polka, the 
 sonata, the symphony, seem to belong to an art so different, 
 that it is difficult to conceive that it was once appropriate 
 to speak of ballad poetry, because the Italian ballare 
 meant to dance, or of a sonnet, because the lute was 
 sounded while poetry was being chanted. The truth is, 
 however, that even to-day, also, poetry and music are 
 allied. As has been said already, the chanting of verse 
 was not originally the cause of its tunes, but the result of 
 them, springing from an endeavor to develop artistically 
 the tunes natural to speech. These tunes our poetry, 
 notwithstanding its present separation from music, still 
 retains. They differ from those of music, yet are analogous 
 to them. Let us consider the more important of the 
 resemblances and differences between the two. — Idem, viii. 
 
 VIBRATION, AS RELATED TO TONE AND COLOR (see also 
 HARMONY and HARMONY OF COLOR). 
 
 That which separates the phenomena of rhythm and, as 
 will be shown in another place, of proportion from those 
 of harmony is the fact that, of the divisions of time or of 
 space respectively causing effects of rhythm and proportion, 
 the mind is directly conscious; whereas of the divisions 
 causing the effects of harmony, the mind is not conscious, 
 and has come to know of them only indirectly, as a result 
 of the investigations of science. These investigations 
 have discovered that, back of the outer ear which is 
 
394 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 shaped so as to collect the sound, and back of the drum 
 too, is an inner ear filled with a pellucid fluid in which 
 float the extremities of the acoustic nerve. Under the 
 influence of impulses of sound from without, the drum is 
 made to vibrate. Its vibrations are communicated to the 
 fluid behind it, and, through this, they set into motion one 
 or more of the delicate organs of sensation — minute pendu- 
 lous rods and also ossicles that rub together. It is only 
 when the vibrations are very frequent — some say sixteen 
 in a second of time — that the ear derives from them the 
 impression of any sound whatever. As they increase in 
 frequency, and, at the same time, lessen in size, the sound 
 becomes higher in pitch, its mere loudness depending not 
 on the relative rate of vibrations, but upon the violence of 
 the stroke producing them. When at last, the vibrations 
 become too frequent for the ear to be aware of them — as 
 when there are forty thousand of them, as some say, in a 
 second of time — the effect upon the ear is the same as if there 
 were no vibrations at all, and the sensation of sound is 
 conveyed no longer. Very similar to the operations that 
 take place in the ear, when recognizing pitch, are those that 
 take place in the eye when recognizing color. Passing 
 through the pupil of the outer eye and the transparent 
 crystalline lens behind it, rays from objects of sight reach 
 the vitreous humor which extends to the retina, an expan- 
 sion of the optic nerve. The effect of color in this is con- 
 sidered to be a result — but exactly how produced scientists 
 are not as yet agreed — of certain vibrations of the organism. 
 As in the case of sound, too, less frequent vibrations cause one 
 hue and more frequent vibrations cause another. — Rhythm 
 and Harmony in Poetry and Music y vii. 
 
 VIBRATORY THEORY, APPLIED TO MIND AS WELL AS MATTER 
 
 {see also arts, the, as influenced by nature and mind) . 
 Effects causing rhythm and proportion, which are con- 
 sciously measured by the mind, and those causing harmony 
 of sound and color, which are not consciously measured, — 
 these effects having been discovered by science to be the 
 same in principle, it is argued that all aesthetic effects are 
 the same in principle. Moreover, it has been discovered 
 that not only do the nerves of the eye and ear vibrate as 
 affected by sound and sight, and communicate to the brain 
 intelligence of particular degrees of pitch and hue as deter- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 395 
 
 mined by the rates and sizes of the vibratory waves, but 
 it has been proved beyond a doubt that the nerves con- 
 stituting the substance of the brain vibrate also, and 
 thus give rise to thoughts and feeHngs; and, not only so, 
 but that the vibrations of the nerves in particular parts 
 of the brain give rise to thoughts and feelings of a particular 
 character; such, for instance, as those connected with 
 particular exercises of memory in recalling general events 
 or specific terms. This fact has been ascertained through 
 various observations and experiments in connection with 
 the loss or removal of certain parts of the brains of men 
 or animals, or with the application of electricity to certain 
 systems of nerves accidentally or artificially exposed or else 
 naturally accessible. Of course, such discoveries tend to the 
 inference that all conscious mental experience whatsoever, 
 precisely as in the case of sensations excited in the organs 
 of the eye and ear, are effects of vibrations produced in the 
 nerves of the brain. If this inference be justified, the line of 
 thought that we have been pursuing apparently justifies 
 the additional inference that all conscious mental experi- 
 ences of the beautiful are effects of harmonious vibrations 
 produced in the nerves of the brain. . . . There are many 
 facts that warrant us in holding it. In holding it, however, 
 let us not neglect noticing, as do many of its advocates, 
 certain other facts. Through the experiments of mesmerism 
 and hypnotism, it has come to be acknowledged that the 
 outer senses can be completely deadened and yet the inward 
 processes of intelligence kept in a state of activity ; and not 
 only so, but that sometimes, merely at the mental suggestion 
 of an operator, irrespective of any appeal to the eye or ear, 
 irrespective therefore of any possible vibrations in the 
 ether or air to account for vibratory effects upon the physical 
 organs of the senses, the one operated upon is made to see 
 pictures and to hear music. In fact, do we not all have 
 experiences of a realization of the same conditions in our 
 dreams? Now, in such cases, either actual physical vibra- 
 tions take place in these organs, or else they do not take 
 place for the simple reason that they are not necessary to 
 the result ; and whichever of these theories we adopt, we are 
 forced to the conclusion that the effects of beauty are 
 dependent upon influences operating in what we understand 
 to be the sphere of the mind. They are awakened there 
 by the mesmerizer irrespective of any appeal through the 
 
396 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 outer senses, and, when awakened, they operate so power- 
 fully that they produce either actual vibrations in the 
 senses, or if not, at least results identical with those caused 
 by actual vibrations. Assuming now what it does not 
 seem possible to doubt — namely, that the existence of 
 these vibrations constitutes the substance of that of which 
 we are conscious in aesthetic effects; that these vibrations 
 are, so to speak, indispensable to the operation of the 
 battery of the brain, which without them cannot communi- 
 cate their peculiar influence to intelligence, — what are 
 we to infer, when we find that they can be set in motion 
 not only from the physical side, but — as in cases of hypnot- 
 ism, telepathy, dreams about music and painting, etc. — 
 from the non-physical side? — what but that on this latter 
 side also the same vibrations exist, or, if not so, a force 
 capable of causing the same; and that the sphere in which 
 we are mentally conscious of the vibrations, or the sphere of 
 personal consciousness, as we may call it, occupies a region 
 between the material and what we may term — because we 
 cannot conceive of it as otherwise — the immaterial? Add 
 to this another fact universally admitted, which is that 
 vibrations harmonious in the sense that has been explained 
 are particularly agreeable, whereas inharmonious vibrations 
 are particularly disagreeable; and why have we not, from 
 modern science, a suggestion of the possibility of there being 
 exact truth in the theory of Pythagoras and the earlier 
 Greeks, who held that the mode of life, so far as it is normal, 
 true, divine, blissful, is not only physically but spiritually a 
 mode of harmony, a mode fitted to produce a literal 
 "music of the spheres"? As has been said, our minds 
 are conscious of experiencing from a world which we can 
 see and hear harmonious effects which are identical with 
 effects coming from a world of which we can only think 
 and feel. Now if by scientific analysis we can ascertain 
 the method through which they come from the one, why 
 have we not a right to argue that it is through the same 
 method that they come from the other? Nor does it 
 necessarily lessen the force of this argument to point out 
 — if indeed this can be satisfactorily done — that the sensa- 
 tions of music cannot be communicated from the imma- 
 terial side to those who have been born deaf, nor the 
 sensations of color to those who have been born blind. 
 These facts prove simply an absence of the needed condi- 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 397 
 
 tions, an absence, that is, of a nerve-battery sufficiently 
 developed to be able to record vibrations physically re- 
 cognizable only through the eye or ear, without which 
 battery the mind as limited by its present physical sur- 
 roundings can, perhaps, be made distinctly conscious of 
 nothing. — Idem, xii. 
 
 These questions, however, concerning the possibility 
 of exciting to mental processes in other ways than through 
 the senses, pertain to psychology rather than to aesthetics. 
 Whether or not, as some think, this possibility implies the 
 existence of a spirit capable of acting independently of the 
 body though now temporarily connected with it, there is 
 no doubt that, in view of the influence which the vibrations 
 of the nerves undoubtedly have upon mental processes, as 
 well as the mental processes upon the nerves, the supposi- 
 tion is rational that the mental processes themselves, 
 together with whatever may be their organic sources, are 
 in some way subject — ^just as are heat, magnetism, and 
 electricity, which certainly approach them in subtlety — 
 to the same laws of vibration, the harmony of the effects 
 of which produces the sensation of beauty in the senses. 
 So rational, too, is the supposition, that no system of 
 aesthetics can afford to ignore it. This would be just as 
 injudicious, to use no stronger term, as to treat it, in our 
 present state of uncertainty with reference to it, as the sole 
 determining consideration. In this system nothing will be 
 found inconsistent with the universal applicability of the 
 vibratory theory, though its spiritual aspects will be 
 recognized as resting upon no more infallible foundation 
 than an argument from analogy. — Idem, xii. 
 
 VOICE-BUILDING 
 
 Voice-building is the only known way in which to give 
 an uncultivated rustic the tones of a gentleman, or of 
 training growing lungs to draw blood into every part of 
 them, and, through doing this, into every part of the brain. 
 It does seem strange that materialists, of all men, should not 
 recognize how much this blood is needed. There is no 
 subtly philosophical, only a physiological reason, why many 
 a student too dull to take interest in other branches has 
 been led through elocution to discover interest in them, 
 and, ultimately, to develop not only brightness but bril- 
 liancy. — Essay on Fundamentals in Education. 
 
)08 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 VOICE-CULTURE, ITS MENTAL EFFECTS. 
 
 Even the department of English devoted to vocal culture 
 has to do with more than merely giving the strenuous but too 
 often uncultured country lad who comes to college the 
 accent and bearing of refinement, desirable as would be 
 this result alone. It is a theory of one of the Oriental cults 
 that to make a man spiritual — in the sense of having an 
 imaginative and inventive mind — you must first teach him 
 how to breathe, because spirit and air — or breath — are one 
 and the same. This explanation is not scientific, but the 
 effort to represent it as such will not appear wholly absurd 
 when we recall men like Beecher, Phillips, Guthrie, and 
 Spurgeon, who, according to their own accounts, began 
 their careers by learning how to breathe, and only subse- 
 quently developed their imaginative and inventive powers, 
 until the results became, as Beecher expresses it, **as easy 
 as to breathe." The truth seems to be that when one 
 habitually clarifies the blood in every cell of his lungs — and 
 about every man that I have ever known needs to learn 
 how to do this — he does the same with the blood in every 
 cell of his brain. This makes all of the brain active. If 
 you could make it all sufficiently active you would have 
 genius. Every man would be a genius, if only he could 
 combine the fever-like glow which sets imagination on fire 
 with the healthful steadiness of pulse which keeps the 
 reason cool. — Essay on Artistic vs. Scientific Education: Note. 
 
 VOICE, NOT WHOLLY EXPRESSIVE OF CHARACTER. 
 
 Not three weeks ago, I read an article in a paper supposed 
 to represent a knowledge of the conditions of culture, 
 attempting to show that the quality of the voice does not 
 depend upon methods of breathing, but entirely — not partly 
 as everybody admits — upon character. I once had a pupil 
 who, when a babe, had dropt upon his head and spine, 
 with the practical result of telescoping his lungs and keep- 
 ing his chin very near his abdomen. Though a dwarf, he was 
 anxious to be a speaker; but it took a full year of hard 
 practise for him to learn to make, in a satisfactory way, a 
 single elementary vowel-sound. Two years later, he had a 
 voice more sweet, rich, and powerful than any man in his 
 large class. I refuse to believe that the change was owing 
 to a change in his character. Nor will I admit that, de- 
 formed as he was, his organs of expression were in need of 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 399 
 
 reformation in any sense not true of those of scores of his 
 fellows whose lungs, if not actually telescoped, had cells 
 as effectually shut up as if this were the case. The light in a 
 cathedral, after nightfall, when shining through the unhewn 
 stone and wooden beams that occupy the space where will 
 be the rose window, as yet unfinished, does not give expres- 
 sion to the Gothic character of the building; nor can it give 
 this, until the work of art has chiseled the stone, and filled 
 the interspaces with delicate tracery and color. A similar 
 relationship often exists between the result of elocutionary 
 art and the expression of human character. — Essay on The 
 Literary Artist and Elocution. 
 
 WALL, WHEN NOT REPRESENTING SUPPORT. 
 
 The objection to the whole is, that the wall of a building 
 should represent support. This square form does not 
 represent the method of support; nor does it, apparently, 
 support anything itself. Therefore it appears to be a sham. 
 Moreover, it produces mental perplexity. It causes one 
 to ask: What, exactly, is the shape of the roof? and, even 
 though this can be guessed, to ask again: How is such a 
 roof affixed to such a wall? — Paintings Sculpture, and 
 Architecture as Representative Arts, xviii. 
 
 WORDS, THEIR MEANING AS DETERMINED BY ASSOCIATION 
 AND COMPARISON {see also LANGUAGE, PLAIN AND FIGUR- 
 ATIVE; POETRY, ITS language; REPRESENTATION IN 
 POETRY, and REPRESENTATION IN SENTENCES. 
 
 We shall find it possible to class all combinations of 
 words under two heads, corresponding to those under 
 which we have already grouped single words. The first 
 class includes those depending for their meaning upon the 
 principle of association, and the second, those depending 
 upon the principle of comparison. To get our bearings here, 
 let us recall briefly that it has been said, with reference to 
 the first class of words, that the times and circumstances in 
 which a certain exclamatory sound like mama or papa is 
 used, cause men, on account mainly of its associations, to 
 accept it as a word, meaning what it does; and that later, 
 after a vocabulary has been partly formed, the same 
 principle of association causes them to ally something for 
 which they have a name with some other thing, and to use 
 the same name for both, as when they call towns or imple- 
 ments after their founders or inventors. It has been said 
 
400 AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 again, with reference to the second class of words, that a 
 certain sound proceeding from an object perceived by men is 
 imitated by their vocal organs, and, on account of the 
 comparison between the two sounds, the one that they 
 have produced is accepted as a name for that which origi- 
 nally produced it, as when cuckoo is adopted as a term of 
 designation for a certain bird ; and that later, after a vocabu- 
 lary has been partly formed, the same principle of comparison 
 causes them to perceive that some conception for which 
 they have a term, is like some other conception, and to 
 apply the same term to it also, as when they use the word 
 clear to refer both to the atmosphere and to the mind. 
 
 In accordance with the analogy of these two methods 
 of determining the meanings of words, when used singly, 
 we shall find that we determine also their meanings when 
 used conjointly, i. e., either by the associations which, 
 when combined in phrases and sentences, the words sug- 
 gest, or by the comparisons which they embody. To 
 illustrate this, suppose that one says: "Their cultivated 
 conversation and attire interfered with the effects of their 
 depravity." The sentence, so far as concerns its meaning, 
 is perfectly intelligible, and this because we have learned 
 to associate with each of the words used, cultivated, conver- 
 sation, attire, etc., a certain definite conception; and 
 this conception comes up before the mind the moment 
 that we hear them. But now, suppose the same thought 
 is expressed, as in this sentence of Goldsmith: "Their 
 finery threw a veil over their grossness." In this latter 
 case, neither the word finery, nor threw, nor veil, nor gross- 
 ness, has precisely the meaning that we are accustomed 
 to associate with it. We do not understand the sentence 
 precisely, until we consider it as a whole, and then not 
 until we consider that the whole expresses a comparison. 
 In other words, the sentence means what it does, not mainly 
 on account of the ordinary associations of its words, but on 
 account of the comparison which it embodies. Take an- 
 other pair of sentences which perhaps will illustrate this 
 difference more clearly. Let one wish to express an 
 unfortunate change in the character of a man hitherto 
 honest. He may say that "His integrity is impaired by 
 severe temptation"; and in this case the meaning will be 
 obvious, because men associate definite meanings with the 
 words integrity, impaired, severe, and temptation. Instead 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 401 
 
 of using this language, however, the man may select words 
 indicating a comparison, and a series of comparisons. He 
 may make a picture of his idea, representing the process of 
 the change in character, by describing the process of an 
 analogous change in nature. He may say: ** His upright- 
 ness bends before some pressing blast." Notice how much 
 more definitely we perceive the comparison, the picture, in 
 uprightness than in integrity, in bends than in impaired, in 
 pressing than in severe, in blast than in temptation. In this 
 last sentence, we perceive at once, as in a picture, the 
 character that stood straight up, the clouds that gathered, 
 the storm that burst, and the ruin that ensued. The 
 immaterial process is represented literally in the material 
 one, and only in connection with this latter have words like 
 bends, pressing, and blast any relevancy. — Poetry as a 
 Representative Arty xvi. 
 
 WORDS, THEIR MEANINGS AS DETERMINED BY THE PRINCIPLE 
 OF REPRESENTATION. 
 
 In forming words by comparison, as by association, 
 terms applicable literally to material conceptions alone 
 come to refer after a time to those that are immaterial. 
 Take words, for instance, describing the operations of the 
 mind. We say that a man's thoughts are pure, clear, 
 mixed, muddled, or clouded, and that he expresses and im- 
 presses them upon others; but only to material things like 
 water, wine, or the atmosphere, can the former class of 
 terms be applied literally; and only into or out of a mate- 
 rial thing can another, and this only a material thing, be 
 literally pressed. Evidently terms of this kind are used as 
 a result of comparing the mental to the material pro- 
 cess, to which in some regards it is analogous. Were it 
 not possible to symbolize the one process in the other, it 
 is obvious that many things which we desire to communi- 
 cate, would remain forever unexpressed. We see, there- 
 fore, how essential to the very existence of language 
 is this power which enables us to figure or picture an object 
 or operation through referring to something which, though 
 like it in some respects, is wholly different from it in 
 others; as different from it as the paint and canvas of a 
 portrait are from the flesh and blood of the person por- 
 trayed. We see, too, how the element of representation, 
 which is essential to all art, is a factor in the very consti- 
 
m» AN ART-PHILOSOPHER'S CABINET 
 
 tution of language from which poetic art is developed. 
 We see also how the means of representation are furnished 
 mainly by the objects and operations of nature; and this 
 not only by those appealing to the ear, the sounds of which 
 can be imitated, but also by those appealing to the eye, the 
 appearance of which suggests words like express and impress. 
 — Idem, XV. 
 
 Revelations, multiplied by almost the whole number of 
 words employed, must flash light through all the hidden 
 depths that underlie the surface forms of one's vernacular, 
 before he can understand them, and use them with absolute 
 appropriateness. Especially is this so in the case of the 
 words with which we are now dealing, — the words formed 
 as a result of comparison; because these contain, far more 
 decidedly than those derived from association, a representa- 
 tive or picturesque — what grammarians term a figurative 
 — element. — Idem, xv. 
 
 WORDS, WHEN FOREIGN TO A LANGUAGE USUALLY UNPOETIC 
 {see ANGLO-SAXON). 
 
 The lack of representative power in the majority of 
 words introduced from foreign languages, is probably 
 one reason why, from Homer to Shakespeare, poets have 
 ranked high who have written at an early stage in the 
 history of a nation's language, before it has become cor- 
 rupted by the introduction of foreign words and phrases. 
 It may furnish one reason, too, why Dante, near the end 
 of his life, thought fit to deliver lectures to the people of 
 Ravenna upon the use of their vernacular. It may explain 
 why Goethe, at the beginning of his career, turned his 
 back upon the fashionable French language, and gave 
 himself to the cultivation of the neglected tongue of his 
 fatherland. At any rate, it does explain, as has been said 
 before, why most of the great poets of England, from 
 Chaucer to Tennyson, have been distinguished among 
 other things for their predominating use of words derived 
 from the Anglo-Saxon. These words still exist in our 
 tongue; and fortunately, notwithstanding the natural ten- 
 dency of all words to grow less poetic, they have lost little 
 of their original significance and force; because side by 
 side with them there exist other words, almost synony- 
 mous, derived mainly from Latin sources. The fact that 
 these latter by common consent are used almost exclusively 
 
QUOTED CRITICAL COMMENTS 403 
 
 for the technical purposes of science, philosophy, and 
 trade, thus leaving the Anglo-Saxon terms to the slighter 
 changes and deteriorations that take place in literature, 
 may furnish the best reason that we have for hoping that 
 this composite language of ours will continue to be for 
 centuries in the future, as it has been in the past, perfectly 
 fitted to give form to the grandest poetry. — Idem, xvii. 
 
 WRITING, ITS STYLE DETERMINED BY THAT OF SPEAKING. 
 
 In the early ages, the styles of both orators and story- 
 tellers grew out of the methods of speech. When the story- 
 tellers became artists, they turned the requirements of 
 accent and inhalation into measure and line, and thus 
 developed verse. All verse, even of an epic, died with its 
 composer, unless its peculiar fitness for recitation caused 
 succeeding minstrels to echo it down the ages; and even a 
 lyric died unless its lines, when they were read, could sing 
 themselves into a song so full of sweetness that the world 
 could not forget it. — Essay on The Literary Artist and 
 Elocution. 
 
 THE END. 
 
A Companion-Book to "An Art-Philosopher's Cabinet" 
 
 A Poet's Cabinet, being passages mainly poetica^ from the 
 works of George Lansing Raymond. Selected and 
 arranged according to subject by Marion Mills Miller, 
 Litt.D., editor of ** The Classics, Greek and Latin," etc. 
 With illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy. 8vo. 
 
 net, $1.50 
 
 "A wide range of topics, under appropriate heads, and their classification is in 
 alphabetical order, thus making the work convenient for reference. . . . Editors, 
 authors, teachers, public speakers, and many others will find it a useful volume, 
 filled with quotable passages in astonishing numbers when it is remembered that 
 they are the work of a single author. '* — Hartford (Conn.) Times. 
 
 "This Poet's Cabinet is the best thing of its class — that confined to the works 
 of one author — upon which our eyes have fallen, either by chance or purpose. We 
 can't help wishing that we had a whole book-shelf of such volumes in our own 
 private library." — Columbus (O.) Journal. . 
 
 "Those familiar with the literary activities of George Lansing Raymond will 
 welcome this cyclopedia of quotations. . . That it should be possible to prepare a 
 book of this kind containing 448 pages and without the inclusion of a commonplace 
 and still less of a banality, is a tribute that few writers have earned. " — San Francisco 
 Argonaut. 
 
 "A very interesting volume, for one can find something worth while by turning 
 at random to any of the pages." — Boston (Mass.) Globe. 
 
 "This book is one to place by the side of our Bartlett, Ballou, Brewer, Edwards, 
 Little, and other compends of prose and verse for the convenience of those who would 
 |point a moral or adorn a tale.' We know not how much Mr. Miller had to omit 
 in his course of selecting this tasteful tribute to his teacher's merit, but we do find, 
 much to admire and nothing to criticise in the result." — Worcester (Mass.) Gazette, 
 
 "The number and variety of the subjects are almost overwhelming, and the 
 searcher for advanced or new thought as expressed by this particular philosopher has 
 no difficulty in coming almost immediately upon something that may strike his fancy 
 or aid him in his perplexities. To the student of poetry and the higher forms of 
 literature, it may be understood that the volume will be of distinct aid. " — Utica (N. 
 Y.) Observer. 
 
 "To study the works of any one man so that we are completely familiar with his 
 ideas upon all important subjects — if the man have within him any element of 
 greatness — is a task which is likely to repay the student's work. . . . This fact makes 
 the unique quality of the present volume . . . quotations which deal with practically 
 every subject to be found in more general anthologies." — Boston (Mass.) Advertiser, 
 
 " Dr. Miller's task in selecting representative extracts from Professor Raymond's 
 works has not been a light one, for there has been no chaff among the wheat, and 
 there was an ever-present temptation to add bulk to the book through freedom 
 in compilation. He thought best, however, to eliminate all but the features which 
 revealed the rich rare soul and personality of the poet, and each quotation is a 
 gem." — Albany (N. Y.) Times-Union. 
 
 "The book contains a careful and authoritative selection of the best things which 
 this brilliant man of letters has given to tne literary world. . . . The compiler has 
 done fine work . . . one cannot turn a page without coming across some quotation 
 which fits in for the day with the happiest result. Dr. Raymond's satire is keen but 
 kindly, his sentiment sweet and tender, and his philosophy convincing and useful.'* 
 ' — Buffalo Courier. 
 
 "Everybody who knows anything about literature, knows, of course, that Dr. 
 Raymond is a philosopher as well as poet ... no mere rhymester, no simple weaver 
 of ear-tickling phrases and of well measured verse and stanza. There is pith as well 
 as music in his song ... all breathing power as well as grace. " — Brooklyn (N. Y.) 
 Citizen. 
 
 "A large volume of quotations from the writings of a single author must neces- 
 sarily present matter of higher literary quality and bear the impress of original 
 thought on essential themes to a larger degree than any mere compendium from the 
 works of many authors. ... His poetry and prose are rich in epigrarn and his 
 manner of expressing an inspiring thought in a line or a word lends itself with pecul- 
 iar advantage to this form of work — quotations for reference. " — Troy (N. Y.) Times. 
 
 "That a poet should have published so great a volume of verse that an anthology 
 or a book of brief extracts from his work should serve to fill 400 pages is, we should 
 say, almost a unique performance and condition . . . and might easily be supposed 
 to induce the reader to desire a more extensive acquaintance." — St. Louis (Mo.) 
 Republic. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. New York and London. Pnbllshera 
 
PROFESSOR RAYMOND'S POETICAL BOOKS 
 
 A Life in Song;. 16rao, cloth extra, gilt top . . . . $1.25 
 
 "An age-worn poet, dying amid strangers in a humble village home, leaves the 
 record of his life in a pile of manuscript poems. These are claimed by a friend and 
 comrade of the poet, but, at the request of the cottagers, he reads them over before 
 taking them away .... This simple but unique plan, . . . forms the outline of 
 a remarkably fine study of the hopes, aspirations, and disappointments of . . . an 
 American modern life. . . . The volume will appeal to a large class of readers by 
 reason of its clear, musical flexible verse, its fine thought, and its intense human 
 interest." — Boston Transcript. -rr ^ i_ ^ 
 
 "Mr. Raymond is a poet, with all that the name implies. He has the true fire- 
 there is no disputing that. There is thought of an elevated character, the diction is 
 pure, the versification is true, the meter correct, and . . . affords innumerable quota- 
 tions to fortify and instruct one for the struggles of life. " — Hartford Post. 
 
 " Marked by a fertility and strength of imagination worthy of our first poets. .^ . 
 The versification throughout is graceful and thoroughly artistic, the imagery varied 
 and spontaneous, . . . the multitude of contemporary bardlings may find in its 
 sincerity of purpose and loftiness of aim a salutary inspiration. " — The Literary World 
 
 "Here, for instance, are lines which, if printed in letters of gold on the front of 
 every pulpit, and practised by every one benind one, would transform the face of the 
 theological world. . . . In short, if you are in search of ideas that are unconven- 
 tional and up-to-date, get a 'Life in Song,' and read it." — Unity. 
 Ballads, and Other Poems. 16mo, cloth extra, gilt top . $1.25 
 
 "The author has achieved a very unusual success, a success to which genuine poetic 
 power has not more contributed than wide reading and extensive preparation. The 
 ballads overflow, not only with the general, but the very particular, ^truths of 
 history." — Cincinnati Times. 
 
 " A work of true genius, brimful of imagination and sweet humanity." — The Fireside 
 (London). 
 
 "Fine and strong, its thought original and suggestive, while its expression is the 
 very perfection of narrative style." — The N. Y. Critic. 
 
 ■'Proves beyond doubt that Mr. Raymond is the possessor of a poetic faculty which 
 is worthy of the most careful and conscientious cultivation." — N. Y. Evening Post. 
 
 "A very thoughtful study of character. . . great knowledge of aims and motives 
 ... Such as read this poem will derive from it a benefit more lasting than the 
 mere pleasure of the moment." — The Spectator (London). 
 
 The Aztec God, and Other Dramas. 16nio, cloth extra, gilt top $1.25 
 
 "The three dramas included in this volume represent a felicitous, intense, and 
 melodious expression of art both from the artistic and poetic point of view. . . . 
 Mr. Raymond's power is above all that of psychologist, and added thereto are the 
 richest products of the imagination both in form and spirit. The book clearly 
 discloses the work of a man possessed of an extremely fine critical poise, of a culture 
 pure and classical, and a sensitive conception of what is sweetest and most ravishing 
 in tone-quality. The most delicately perceptive ear could not detect a flaw in the 
 mellow and rich music of the blank verse. " — Public Opinion. 
 
 "As fine lines as are to be found anywhere in English. . . . Sublime thought 
 fairly leaps in sublime expression. ... As remarkable for its force of epigram 
 as for its loftiness of conception. " — Cleveland World. ^ 
 
 "... Columbus one finds a piece of work which it is difficult to avoid injuring 
 with fulsome praise. The character of the great discoverer is portrayed grandly and 
 greatly. ... It is difficult to conceive how anyone who cares for that which is 
 best in literature . . . could fail to be strengthened and uplifted by this heroic 
 treatment of one of the great stories of the world." — N. Y. Press. 
 
 Dante and Collected Verse. 16mo, cloth extra, gilt top . $1.25 
 
 " Epigram, philosophy, history — these are the predominant elements . . . which 
 masterly construction, pure diction, and lofty sentiment unite in making a glowing 
 piece of blank verse." — Chicago Herald. 
 
 " The poems will be read with keenest enjoyment by all who appreciate literary 
 genius, refined sentiment, and genuine culture. The publication is a gem through- 
 out." — New Haven Leader. 
 
 "The poet and the reformer contend in Professor Raymond. When the latter 
 has the mastery, we respond to the justice, the high ideals, the truth of all he says — 
 and says with point and vigor — but when the poet conquers, the imagination soars. 
 . , , The mountain poems are the work of one with equally high ideals of life 
 and of song." — Glasgow (Scotland) Herald. 
 
 "Brother Jonathan can not claim many great poets, but we think he has 'struck 
 oil,' in Professor Raymond." — Western (England) Morning News. 
 
 "This brilliant composition . . . gathers up and concentrates for the reader 
 more of the reality of the great Italian than is readily gleaned from the author of the 
 Inferno himself." — Oakland Enquirer. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. New York and London. Pnbltshers 
 
PROFESSOR RAYMOND'S WORKS 
 
 Pictures in Verse. With 20 illustrations by Maud Stumm. 
 Square 8vo, in ornamental cloth covers . $ .75 
 
 "Little love poems of a light and airy character, describing pretty rustic scenes. 
 or domestic interiors. ... As charming for its illustrations as for its reading 
 matter." — Detroit Free Press. 
 
 "Simple songs of human every-day experience . . . with a twinkle of homely 
 humor and a wholesome reflection of domestic cheer. We like his optimistic senti- 
 ments, and unspoiled spirit of boyishness when he strikes the chord of love. It is 
 all very true and good." — The Independent. 
 
 The Mountains about Williamstown. With an introduction 
 by M. M. Miller, and 35 full-page illustrations from 
 original photographs; oblong shape, cloth, gilt edges. 
 Net $2.00 postpaid 
 
 "The beauty of these photographs from so many points of vantage would of itself 
 suffice to show the fidelity and affection with which Professor Raymond pursued the 
 theme of his admirably constructed poems. The introduction by his pupil, friend, 
 and associate is an exhaustive study. No better or more thorough review could be 
 written of the book, or more clearly point out the directness and power of Professor 
 Raymond's work. . . . Arnong his many books none justifies more brilliantly 
 the correctness and charm of his rhetorical instruction, or his facility in exemplifying 
 what he commends." — Hartford (Conn.) Courant. 
 
 "The poems all show Dr. Raymond's perfect art of expression, his deep and relig- 
 ious love of nature, and his profound reverence for the landscape he celebrates. 
 Every New Englander will appreciate the volume, and Williams College men can 
 ill afford not to possess it." — Portland (Me.) Evening Express. 
 
 "They show a keen ear for rhythm, felicity of phrase, exquisite taste, a polished 
 style, and often exalted feeling. Mr. Raymond's students . . . and those who 
 have read his book upon the principles that underlie art, poetry, and music will be 
 interested in this clothing, in concrete form, of his poetic theories. . . . Dr. 
 Miller makes in his Introduction a long and lucid discussion of these. " — New York 
 Times. 
 
 "The men of Williams College especially owe him a debt of gratitude that can 
 never be paid." — Troy (N. Y.) Record. 
 
 "The many full-page illustrations give lovely vistas of the Berkshires and of 
 the stream-silvered valleys they guard. Sometimes philosophic, sometimes purely 
 imaginative, through all the verse runs a high patriotism and a love of beauty and 
 humanity which uplifts and strengthens. " — Boston Transcript. 
 
 " Verse that often suggests Bryant in its simplicity and dignity. That is surely a 
 sound model for nature poetry. Large and finely produced photographs bring the 
 mountains vividly before the reader. This is not a book to read in the subway; but 
 lying on the sunny side of a stony wall when the leaves are bursting in spring, it 
 will surely appeal. " — Brooklyn Eagle. ) 
 
 Modern Fishers of Men. i2mo, cloth, gilt top . $1.00 
 
 " This delightful novel is written with charming insight. The rare gift ofjcharacter 
 delineation the author can claim in full. . . . Shrewd comments upon life and 
 character add spice to the pages." — Nashville Tennessean. 
 
 " Deals with love and religion in a small country town, and under the facile pen 
 and keen humor of the author, the various situations . . . are made the most of 
 . . . true to the life. " — Boston Globe. 
 
 "Such a spicy, racy, more-truth-than-fiction work has not been placed in our 
 hands for a long time. " — Chicago Evening Journal. 
 
 " A captivating story, far too short . . . just as fresh and absorbing as when the 
 author laid down his pen . . . that was before typewriters. " — Denver Republican. 
 
 "Essentially humorous, with an undercurrent of satire .... also subtle char- 
 acter delineation, which will appeal strongly to those who have the perceptive facul- 
 ties highlv developed." — San Francisco Bulletin. 
 
 "The book is delightful .... in several ways very remarkable." — Boston 
 Times. 
 
 " A distinct surprise lies in this little story .... of 1879 .... so strongly 
 does it partake of the outlook and aim of the new church of to-day." — Washington 
 Star 
 
 "In 'Modern Fishers of Men,' one sees that the Men and Religion Forward 
 Movement existed before it began." — The Watchman, Boston. 
 
 "Pleasant reading for those whom sad experience has led to doubt the possibility 
 of a real community uplift with lasting qualities. The story is brightened With a 
 Quiet but none the less hearty humor. " — Cincinnati Times. 
 
 O4 P. PUTNAM'S SONS. New York and London. Pobllshara 
 
ProfessorRaymond's System of COMPARATIVEiESTHETICS 
 
 I. — Art in Theory. 8vo, cloth extra $1.75 
 
 " Scores an advance upon the many art criticisms extant .... Twenty brilliant 
 chapters, pregnant with suggestion. " — Popular Science Monthly. 
 
 "A well grounded, thoroughly supported, and entirely artistic conception of art 
 that will lead observers to distrust the charlatanism that imposes an idle and super- 
 ficial mannerism upon the public in place of true beauty and honest workmanship. " 
 — The New York Times. 
 
 " His style is good, and his logic sound and . . . of the greatest possible service 
 to the student or artistic theories." — Art Journal (London). 
 
 II.— The Representative Significance of Form. 8vo, cloth extra $2.00 
 
 "A valuable essay. . . . Professor Raymond goes so deep into causes as to 
 explore the subconscious and the unconscious mind for a solution of his problems, 
 and eloquently to range through the conceptions of religion, science and metaphysics 
 in order to find fixed principles of taste. ... A highly interesting discussion. " — 
 The Scotsman (Edinburgh). 
 
 "Evidently the ripe fruit of years of patient and exhaustive study on the part of a 
 man singularly fitted for his task. It is profound in insight, searching in analysis, 
 broad in spirit, and thoroughly modern in method and sympathy. " — The Universalist 
 Leader. 
 
 "Its title gives no intimation to the general reader of its attractiveness for him, or 
 to curious readers of its widely discursive range of interest .... Its broad range 
 may remind one of those scythe-bearing chariots with which the ancient Persians 
 used to mow down hostile files. " — The Outlook. 
 
 III. — Poetry as a Representative Art. 8vo, cloth extra . $1,75 
 
 "I have read it with pleasure, and a sense of instruction on many points." — 
 Francis Turner Palgrave, Professor of Poetry, Oxford University. 
 
 "Dieses ganz vortrefifliche Werk. " — Englischen Studien, Universitat Breslau. 
 
 "Ah acute, interesting, and brilliant piece of work. ... As a whole the essay 
 deserves unqualified praise." — N. Y. Independent. 
 
 IV,— Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as Representative Arts. 
 With 225 illustrations. Svo $2.50 
 
 "The artist will find in it a wealth of profound and varied learning; of original, 
 suggestive, helpful thought . . . of absolutely inestimable value. " — The Looker-on. 
 
 "Expression by means of extension or size, . . . shape, . . . regularity in 
 outlines .... the human body . . . posture, gesture, and movement, . . . are 
 all considered. ... A specially interesting chapter is the one on color." — 
 Current Literature. 
 
 "The whole book is the work of a man of exceptional thoughtfulness, who says 
 what he has to say in a remarkably lucid and direct manner. " — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 v.— The Genesis of Art Form. Fully illustrated. Syo . . $2.25 
 
 "In a si)irit at once scientific and that of the true artist, he pierces through the 
 manifestations of art to their sources, and shows the relations intimate and essential, 
 between painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture. A book that possesses 
 not only singular value, but singular charm." — N. Y. Times. 
 
 "A help and a delight. Every aspirant for culture in any of the liberal arts, includ- 
 ing music and poetry, will find something in this book to aid him. " — Boston Times. 
 
 "It is impossible to withhold one's admiration from a treatise which exhibits in 
 such a large degree the qualities of philosophic criticism." — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 VI,— Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, Together with 
 Music as a Representative Art. Svo, cloth extra . $1.75 
 
 "Professor Raymond has chosen a delightful subject, and he treats it with all the 
 charm of. narrative and high thought and profound study." — New Orleans States. 
 
 "The reader must be, indeed, a person either of supernatural stupidity or of 
 marvelous erudition, who does not discover much information in Prof. Raymond's 
 exhaustive and instructive treatise. From page to page it is full of suggestion. "-=• 
 The Academy (London). 
 
 VII.— Proportion and Harmony of Line and Color in Painting, 
 Sculpture, and Architecture. Fully illustrated. Svo. $2.50 
 
 " Marked by profound thought along lines unfamiliar to most readers and thinkers. 
 . . . When grasped, however, it becomes a source of great enjoyment and exhil- 
 aration. . . . No critical person can afford to ignore so valuable a contribution to 
 the art-thought of the day." — The Art Interchange (N. Y.). 
 
 "One does not need to be a scholar to follow this scholar as he teaches whila 
 seeming to entertain, for he does both. " — Burlington Hawkeye. 
 
 " The artist who wishes to penetrate the mysteries of color, the sculptor who desires 
 to cultivate his sense of proportion, or the architect whose ambition is to reach to a 
 high standard will find the work helpful and inspiring." — Boston Transcript. 
 
 G, P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. Publishers 
 
TEXT-BOOKS BY PROFESSOR RAYMOND 
 
 The Essentials of -Esthetics. 8vo. Illustrated. Net, $2.50 
 
 This work, which is mainly a compendium of the author's system of Comparative 
 ^Esthetics, previously published in seven volumes, was prepared by request, for a 
 text-book and for readers whose time is too limited to study the minutiae of the 
 subject. 
 
 "It can hardly fail to make talent more rational, genius more conscious of the 
 principles of art, and the critic and connoisseur better equipped for impression, 
 judgment, or appraisement. " — N. Y. Times. 
 
 "In spite of all that has been written on the subject from widely contrasted 
 standpoints, this manual has distinct claims on students. " — The Standard (London). 
 
 "His evidence is clear and straightforward, and his conclusions eminently scholarly 
 and sound. " — Vanity Fair (London.) 
 
 "In his scientific excursion, he makes hard things easy to the lay mind. The 
 serious student of art cannot fail to find the book interesting, and in certain import- 
 ant matters convincing." — Manchester (England) Guardian. 
 
 "This book is a valuable contribution to an important subject which mav help 
 us to understand more fully not only that a picture, or a poem, or a musical com- 
 position is good, but also why it is good, and what constitutes its excellence. " — The 
 Christian Register (Boston). 
 
 "So lucid in expression and rich in illustration that every page contains matter of 
 deep interest even to the general reader. " — Boston Herald. 
 
 "Dr. Raymond's book will be invaluable. He shows a knowledge both extensive 
 and exact of the various fine arts, and accompanies his ingenious and suggestive 
 theories by copious illustrations." — The Scotsman (Edinburgh). 
 
 "The whole philosophy underlying this intelligent art-criticism should be given 
 the widest possible publicity. " — Boston Globe. 
 
 The Orator's Manual. i2mo . . $1.20 
 
 A Practical and Philosophic Treatise on Vocal Culture, Emphasis, and Gesture, 
 together with Hints for the Composition of Orations and Selections for Declamation 
 and Reading, designed as a Text-book for Schools and Colleges, and for Public 
 Speakers and Readers who are obliged to Study without an Instructor, fully revised 
 with important Additions after the Fifteen Edition. 
 
 "It is undoubtedly the most complete and thorough treatise on oratory for the 
 practical student ever published." — The Educational Weekly, Chicago. 
 
 "I consider it the best American book upon technical elocution. It has also 
 leanings toward a philosophy of expression that no other book written by an Ameri- 
 can has presented." — Moses True Brown, Head of the Boston School of Oratory. 
 
 "The work is evidently that of a skilful teacher bringing before students of oratory 
 the results of philosophical thinking and successful experience in an admirable form 
 and a narrow compass." — /, W. Churchill, Professor of Homiletics, Andover Theo- 
 logical Seminary. 
 
 "I have long wished for just such a book. It is thoroughly practical, and descends 
 into details, really helping the speaker." — J. M. Hoppin, D.D., Professor of Hom- 
 iletics, Yale. 
 
 "The completeness, exactness, and simplicity of this manual excite my admira- 
 tion. It is so just and full of nature."— A. T. McGill. D.D.. LL.D., Professor of 
 Homiletics, Princeton. 
 
 The Writer (with Post Wheeler, Litt.D.) i2mo. $IhOO 
 
 A Concise, Complete, and Practical Text-book of Rhetoric, designed to aid in the 
 Appreciation, as well as Production of All Forms of Literature, Explaining, for the 
 first time, the Principles of Written Discourses by correlating them to those of Oral 
 Discourse. Former editions fully revised. 
 
 "A book of unusual merit. A careful examination creates the impression that the 
 exercises have been prepared by practical teachers, and the end in view is evidently 
 to teach rather than to give information. "—rA« Pacific Educational Journal. 
 
 "The pupil will forget he is studying rhetoric, and will come to express himself for 
 the pure pleasure he has in this most beautiful art." — Indiana School Journal. 
 
 " It reaches its purpose. While especially valuable as a text-book in schools, it is 
 a volume that should be in the hands of every literary worker." — StcUe Gazette, 
 Trenton, N. J. ...... 
 
 " The treatment is broader and more philosophical than in the ordinary text-book. 
 Every species of construction and figure is considered. The student has his critical 
 and literary sense further developed by . . . the best writings in the language used 
 to illustrate certain qualities of style. " — The School Journal. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. New York and London. Pabllshera 
 
other Books by Professor Raymond 
 
 The Psychology of Inspiration. 8vo, cloth. Net, $1.40; 
 by mail, $1.53. 
 
 The book founds its conclusions on a study of the action of the human mind when 
 obtaining and expressing truth, as this action has been revealed through the most 
 recent investigations of physiological, psychological, and psychic research; and the 
 freshness r.nd originality of the presentation is acknowledged and commended by 
 such authorities as Dr. J. Mark Baldwin, Professor of Psychology in Johns Hopkins 
 University, who says that its psychological position is "new and valuable"; Dr. 
 W. T. Harris, late United States Commissioner of Education and the foremost 
 metaphysician in the country, who says it is sure "to prove helpful to many who 
 fincl themselves on the border line between the Christian and the non-Christian 
 beliefs"; and Dr. Edward Everett Hale, who says that "no one has approached the 
 subject from this point of view." He characterizes it, too, as an "endeavor to 
 formulate conceptions that almost every Christian to-day believes, but without know- 
 ing why he does so. " As thus intimated by Dr. Hale, the book is not a mere con- 
 tribution to apologetics — not a mere defense of Christianity. It contains a formula- 
 tion of principles that underlie all rational interpretation of all forms of revealed 
 religion. These principles are applied in the book to Christian doctrine, faith, and 
 conduct; to the services, discipline, and unity of the church; and to the methods of 
 insuring success in missionary enterprise. It strives to reveal both the truth and the 
 error that are in such systems of thought as are developed in AGNOSTICISM, 
 PRAGMATISM, MODERNISM, THEOSOPHY. SPIRITUALISM, AND CHRIS- 
 TIAN SCIENCE. 
 
 The first and, perhaps, the most important achievement of the book is to show 
 that the fact of inspiration can be demonstrated scientifically: in other words, that 
 the inner subconscious mind can be influenced irrespective of influences exerted 
 through the eyes and the ears, i. e., by what one sees or hears. In connection with 
 this fact it is also shown that, when the mind is thus inwardly or inspirationally 
 influenced, as, for example, in hypnotism, the influence is suggestive and not dicta- 
 torial. As a result, the inspired person presents the truth given him not according 
 to the letter, but according to the spirit. His object is not to deal with facts and impart 
 knowledge, as science does. This would lead men to walk by sight. His object is 
 to deal with principles, and these may frequently be illustrated just as accurately by 
 apparent, or, as in the case of the parable, by imagined circumstances, as by actual 
 ones. For this reason, many of the scientific and historical so-called "objections" 
 to the Bible need not be answered categorically. Not only so, but such faith as it is 
 natural and right that a rational being should exercise can be stimulated and devel- 
 oped in only the degree in which the text of a sacred book is characterized by the 
 very vagueness and variety of meaning and statement which the higher criticism 
 of the Bible has brought to light. The book traces these to the operation and re- 
 quirements of the human mind through which inspiration is received and to which 
 it is imparted. Whatever inspires must appear to be, in some way, beyond the grasp 
 of him who communicates it, and can make him who hears it think and train him to 
 think, in the degree only in which it is not comprehensive or complete; but merely, 
 like everything else in nature, illustrative of that portion of truth which the mind 
 needs to be made to find out for itself. 
 
 "A book that everybody should read . . . medicinal for prof est Christians, and 
 full of guidance and encouragement for those finding themselves somewhere between 
 the desert and the town. The sane, fair, kindly attitude taken gives of itself a 
 profitable lesson. The author proves conclusively that his mind — and if his, why 
 not another's? — can be at one and the same time sound, sanitary, scientific, and 
 essentially religious." — The Examiner, Chicago. 
 
 "The author writes with logic and a 'sweet reasonableness' that will doubtless 
 convince many halting minds. It is an inspiring book." — Philadelphia Inquirer. 
 
 "It is, we think, difficult to overestimate the value of this volume at the present 
 critical pass in the history of Christianity." — The Arena, Boston. 
 
 " The author has taken up a task calling for heroic effort, and has given us a volume 
 worthy of careful study. . . . The conclusion is certainly very reasonable." — 
 Christian Intelligencer, New York. 
 
 "Interesting, suggestive, helpful," — Boston Congregationalist. 
 
 "Thoughtful, reverent, suggestive." — Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia. 
 
 "Professor Raymond is a clear thinker, an able writer, and an earnest Christian, 
 and his book is calculated to be greatly helpful to those in particular who, brought up 
 in the Christian faith, find it impossible longer to reconcile the teachings of the 
 Church with the results of modern scientific thought." — Newark ( N. J.) Evening 
 News. 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Pubs., New York and Londoa 
 
OTHER BOOKS BY PROFESSOR RAYMOND 
 
 Fundamentals in Education, Art, and Civics: Essays and 
 Addresses. 8vo, cloth. Net, $1.40; by mail, $1.53 
 
 "Of fascinating interest to cultured readers, to the student, the teacher, the poet, 
 the artist, the musician, in a word to all lovers of sweetness and light. The author has 
 a lucid and vigorous style, and is often strikingly original. What impresses one is 
 the personality of a profound thinker and a consummate teacher behind every 
 paragraph." — Dundee Courier, Scotland. 
 
 "The articles cover a wide field and manifest a uniformly high culture in every 
 field covered. It is striking how this great educator seems to have anticipated the 
 educational tendencies of our times some decades before they imprest the rest of us. 
 He has been a pathfinder for many younger men, and still points the way to higher 
 heights. The book is thoroughly up-to-date." — Service, Philadelphia. 
 
 Clear, informing, and delightfully readable. Whether the subject is art and 
 morals, technique in expression, or character in a republic, each page will be found 
 interesting and the treatment scholarly, but simple, sane, and satisfactory . . . the 
 story of the Chicago fire is impressingly vivid." — Chicago Standard. 
 
 "He is a philosopher, whose encouraging idealism is well grounded in scientific 
 Btudy, and who illuminates points of psychology and ethics as well as of art when 
 they come up in the course of the discussion. " — The Scotsman, Edinburgh, Scotland. 
 
 "A scholar of wide learning, a teacher of experience, and a writer of entertaining 
 and convincing style." — Chicago Examiner. 
 
 "'The Mayflower Pilgrims' and 'Individual Character in Our Republic' call for 
 unstinted praise. They are interpenetrated by a splendid patriotism. " — Rochester 
 Post-Express. 
 
 "Agreeably popularizes much that is fundamental in theories of life and thought. 
 The American people owe much of their progress, their optimism, and we may say 
 their happiness to the absorption of just such ideals as Professor Raymond stands 
 for." — Minneapolis Book Review Digest. 
 
 "They deal with subjects of perennial interest, and with principles of abiding 
 importance, and they are presented with the force and lucidity which his readers 
 have come to look for in Dr. Raymond." — Living Age, Boston. 
 
 Suggestions for the Spiritual Life — College Chapel Talks. 
 
 8vo., cloth. Net $1.40; by mail, $1.53 
 
 "Sermons of more than usual worth, full of thought of the right kind, fresh, 
 strong, direct, manly. . . . Not one seems to strain to get a young man's atten- 
 tion by mere popular allusions to a student environment. They are spiritual, 
 scriptural, of straight ethical import, meeting diflSculties, confirming cravings, 
 amplifying tangled processes of reasoning, and not forgetting the emotions. " — Hart- 
 ford Theological Seminary Record (Congregationalist). 
 
 "The clergyman who desires to reach young men especially, and the teacher of 
 men's Bible Classes may use this collection of addresses to great advantage. . . . 
 "The subjects are those of every man's experience in character building . . . such a 
 widespread handling of God's word would have splendid results in the production 
 of men." — The Living Church (Episcopalian). 
 
 "Great themes, adequately considered. . . . Surely the young men who 
 listened to these sermons must have been stirred and helped by them as we have 
 been stirred and helped as we read them. " — Northfield (Mass.) Record of Christian 
 Work (Evangelical). 
 
 "They cover a wide range. They are thoughtful, original, literary, concise, 
 condensed, pithy. They deal with subjects in which the young mind will be inter- 
 ested. " — Western Christian Advocate (Methodist). 
 
 . "Vigorous thought, vigorously expressed. One is impressed by the moderation 
 and sanity of the teachings here set forth and scholarly self-restraint in statement. 
 Back of them is not only a believing mind, but genuine learning and much hard 
 thinking." — Lutheran Observer. 
 
 " Though most of the addresses were prepared over forty years ago . . . no 
 chapter in the book seems to be either 'old-fogyish' or 'unorthodox.' " — The Watch- 
 man (Boston, Baptist). . . 
 
 "The preacher will find excellent models for his work and stimulating thought . . . 
 attractively presented and illustrated. . . . The addresses are scholariy and 
 especially adapted to cultivated minds. They show evidence of intimate acquaint- 
 ance with modern science and sympathy with modern ideas." — Springfield (Mass.) 
 Republican. . . 
 
 "Beautiful and inspiring discourses . . . embody the ripe conviction of a mind 
 of exceptional refinement, scholarship, and power ... a psychologist, a phil- 
 osopher, and a poet. " — N.Y. Literary Digest. „ nt-f .. . 
 
 " Never was such a book more needed by young men than jnst now... — Pkuadel- 
 phia Public Ledger. 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Pubs. New York and Londoa. 
 
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