GIFT OF 
 Elisabeth Whitney Putn 
 
 ^ 
 
 at nan . 
 
^p (Eleanor Kotnlanli 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART. 
 THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and New York 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE 
 OF ART 
 
 Studies in Analytical Esthetics 
 
 BY 
 
 ELEANOR ROWLAND, Ph.D. 
 
 Professor of Psychology and Dean of Women 
 in Reed College 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 ^z Ulitoecjiitie '^xzH Cambcibge 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ELEANOR ROWLAND 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published September iqi^ 
 
TO 
 
 PROFESSOR HUGO MUNSTERBERG 
 
 THE HONORED TEACHER WITH WHOM I FIRST 
 
 BEGAN THE STUDY OF ^ESTHETICS 
 
 412480 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To a thoughtful person who spends any 
 portion of his life in the contemplation of 
 beautiful things, it must occur at one time or 
 another that there is a certain strangeness in 
 grouping under one head such an enormous 
 variety of objects as we find in our world of 
 Art, and labeling them with one term. What 
 common factor unites such diverse creations 
 as a poem and a cathedral, a song and a 
 statue, and makes it possible and intelligible 
 to call them all art products ? 
 
 The answers to this question have been 
 many. The problem has been attacked from 
 standpoints that diverge so widely that the 
 discussions have easily failed to meet on any 
 issue. From the sociologist, the scientist, and 
 the philosopher, to the practical artist, repre- 
 vii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 senting every type of training and habit of 
 mind, have come more or less comprehen- 
 sive surveys of the various arts, and at- 
 tempts to define the meaning of Art as a 
 whole. 
 
 The historian is preeminently interested 
 in what Art has been, and the reformer in 
 what it should be. But to the philosopher 
 or psychologist, the essential enigma is — 
 what is it? That objects presenting diversity 
 of material as wide as the world affords, and 
 reflecting activities coextensive with man's 
 whole life, can with any accuracy be brought 
 into one group, and can produce certain 
 characteristic states of mind, is indeed ex- 
 traordinary. More than this, that certain 
 materials should have been selected as most 
 appropriate for clothing certain ideas, so that 
 one idea flies to a garment of stone and an- 
 other to one of words, yet both finished 
 products remain art, is a puzzle that cannot 
 viii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 fail to tease the mind of one equally alive 
 to the facts and to their apparent inconsist- 
 ency. 
 
 That many roads to the problem suggest 
 themselves is evident enough from the num- 
 ber that have been chosen. There is, how- 
 ever, a directness in the method of a certain 
 great writer on aesthetics which commends 
 itself by its simplicity, and in his case at 
 least, by the results. Aristotle set out for 
 an explanation of tragedy as a form of art. 
 What common factor makes a complete 
 tragedy of this or that impersonation of 
 character? To answer this question he lis- 
 tened to the best tragedies. He spent time 
 in their presence, observing what com- 
 posed them, and exactly what made up his 
 own state of mind as a spectator. He was 
 then able to formulate an exposition of 
 tragedy which has never been surpassed. If 
 he had left us a similar analysis of the other 
 ix 
 
PREFACE 
 
 arts, such as that of sculpture with a dissect- 
 ing of the "sculpturesque" emotions, the 
 essentials of music and the common factor 
 in all musical appreciation, much later work, 
 and above all the present one, would not have 
 been necessary. 
 
 Some of the arts have developed since his 
 day, so that any ancient formula must have 
 been in any case outgrown, but it is as a 
 humble disciple of Aristotle's method that 
 the writer has conceived the following stud- 
 ies. They represent an attempt to limit the 
 provinces of certain arts, the ideas which 
 these arts, better than any other of man's 
 creation, can express, and the characteristic 
 mental states that are aroused in appreciat- 
 ing them — states which, like the pity and 
 fear of tragedy, must be aroused if an object 
 is to fulfill the demands of its own particular 
 art. What one art may do and what it can 
 never do remain still as obscure in many 
 
 X 
 
PREFACE 
 
 cases as if Lessing had never set the ex- 
 ample of a masterly setting of limits. 
 
 This group of studies makes no pretense 
 to cover the field of the fine arts. It repre- 
 sents merely the crystallization of some of 
 the results of four years* teaching of aesthet- 
 ics, and the arts which find no place in this 
 analysis have been omitted because their 
 treatment did not fall into a length and char- 
 acter coordinate with the other essays. 
 
 Portland, Oregon, 
 May I, 1913. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 
 I. 
 
 Sculpture 
 
 I 
 
 II. 
 
 The Minor Arts 
 
 47 
 
 III. 
 
 Painting 
 
 . 83 
 
 IV. 
 
 Music 
 
 III 
 
 V. 
 
 Art and Nature . 
 
 • 153 
 
I 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE 
 OF ART 
 
 SCULPTURE 
 
 That our acquaintance with the world often 
 dulls our appreciation of its real meaning 
 has been a commonplace since the begin- 
 ning of speculative thought. It was the task 
 of Socrates, in Athens, to demand of his 
 countrymen, somewhat too little aware of 
 the mystery of things, that they define the 
 nature of the simplest objects and give rea- 
 sons for the most everyday pursuits. By 
 exposing their ignorance in the matters of 
 which they were most certain, he thus roused 
 them to a more vigorous philosophy. It is 
 profitable now and then, for us, as well, to 
 3 . 
 
THE/SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 make a restatement of our old ideas, to 
 "break through the crust of familiarity which 
 tends to be deposited around well-known 
 things," and to be as it were our own Socratic 
 teachers. 
 
 Let us suppose ourselves, then, deprived 
 of all acquaintance with sculpture as a fine 
 art, and for the sake of an unprejudiced point 
 of view let us imagine ourselves as entering a 
 gallery of statues for the first time. It is all 
 to be a surprise to us. Everything will seem 
 astonishing. There is to be an impartiality 
 of emphasis as if we had succeeded in com- 
 bining the sensitiveness of a mature appre- 
 ciation with the candid curiosity of a child. 
 
 Our questions when we are to be intro- 
 duced to any new experience naturally fall 
 into certain types. We ask, "What kind of 
 thing is it to be? " "Are we to see, hear, or 
 feel it?" "What is it made of?" "Why 
 was it made?" "What are we to do with 
 4 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 it ? ** " How must we act when brought into 
 its presence ? " — and with such questions on 
 our lips we are ushered into a gallery of 
 sculpture, and told to find our answers as 
 best we may. 
 
 We are on the threshold of a long room, 
 around the edges of which are arranged 
 images of men and animals. Some are cut 
 from marble, granite, or softer stone, and 
 others are molten out of bronze. They all 
 stand raised from the floor on pedestals, or 
 hang as reliefs upon the wall, but this arti- 
 ficial isolation only serves to emphasize a 
 detachment which is already a conspicuous 
 feature of their whole attitude. Here stands 
 a youth in marble, well developed, nude, 
 graceful, and with no apparent excuse for 
 being, except that he exhibits a fine ideal 
 of what a youth should be. There stands/ 
 another boy, similarly well developed, al- 
 though his build is somewhat diflferent, and 
 5 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the poise of his limbs and the direction of 
 his glance are slightly varied. 
 
 We pass from one room to another, and 
 lining every wall are quiet figures: some 
 draped, some nude, some whole, some frag- 
 mentary, some of marble, some of metal, some 
 alone, and some in groups. But despite their 
 proximity, no statue looks at us or at its 
 neighbor. The room is full of them, but they 
 are solitary ! Even when the figures make up 
 one relief, and where they are engaged in 
 actions which bind them seemingly together, 
 they are curiously alone. A lady takes jewels 
 from her handmaiden's box. In a gentle, idle 
 fashion, as if despite her level glance she saw 
 neither box nor maiden. An old man stands 
 beside his son — a glorious youth, who (since 
 this IS a grave relief) presumably has died, 
 although there is no suggestion of death in 
 his perfect form. He gazes away from his 
 father, just as his father looks past him, 
 6 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 while the dog at his feet snufFs for a foot- 
 print that he cannot find. We recall other 
 groups, where despite the fact that centaurs 
 and Lapiths struggle for the possession of 
 the women, the contest is an impersonal one. 
 Each Lapith, each woman, is in a world of 
 its own, and carries with it an air of unique 
 self-sufficiency, which in a figure like that of 
 the Olympian Apollo is almost overpower- 
 ing. His proud arm is extended over a 
 struggle which he does not deign to watch, 
 and his eyes are turned to a horizon in- 
 finitely remote. All this is not without its 
 effect upon an observer. 
 
 The atmosphere does not invite words. 
 Apparently the question as to what is to be 
 done is not in order. There is nothing to 
 be done but to look, perhaps to feel the 
 smooth surface here and there, and to pre- 
 serve a silence as of listening to a voice 
 where no voice speaks. ^ 
 
 7 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 In other rooms are more standing and 
 sitting forms. One leans against a pillar, 
 another holds her drapery, one glances here, 
 another there. Their lines are subtly varied, 
 and the figures diflPer in being more or less 
 free-standing from their background. But 
 all of them are quite simple, and wholly un- 
 concerned with us or with each other. The 
 titles on their marble bases read something 
 like this : " Youth carrying calf," " Statue 
 of a woman," " Athena," " Priestess," 
 " Youth leading sacrificial cows," "Man 
 with musical instrument," " Nike binding 
 her sandal," " Seated goddess." There are 
 warriors, too, and men on horseback. There 
 are combats with animals and with gods. 
 But most of the figures are doing nothing, 
 or, when an action is introduced, it is of a 
 nature whose triviality one would seemingly 
 ^ resent. We do not consider it the most sig- 
 nificant act in the world to ride on a horse. 
 8 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 Why make a stone image eternally exploit- 
 ing that act? It has never seemed momen- 
 tous to handle a necklace, to lean on a spear, 
 to hold drapery, to watch a lizard, to finger 
 a reed ; but as if even these vague pursuits 
 were too arduous, the actors perform them ^ 
 with serene indifference, and by far the 
 greater number make no pretence to occu- 
 pation, but stand without apology and with- 
 out concern. y 
 
 Even the animals have caught this disre- 
 gard of busy-ness. Many of them are repre- 
 sented in motion as the human athletes had 
 been, but, as with them, the motion is suc- 
 cessful, the muscular adaptation is secure. 
 There is in every case an easy certainty as 
 to the outcome, which makes the movement, 
 however transitory, as stable as the pedestal 
 beneath it. The questions arise. Why these 
 acres of stone ? Why this monotony of sub- 
 ject, gods, men, and animals at rest or in 
 9 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 /" ever-repeated action ? Where is the dramatic 
 interest to be found in such successful move- 
 ment, such calm joy and such stable grief? 
 Is not the only excuse for these stones' ex- 
 istence, that they represent life, and yet could 
 we tolerate such passionless society or such 
 meaningless pursuits ? 
 
 We are asking these questions because 
 we are here to question and not at all be- 
 cause we have felt incongruities in what we 
 have seen. The trivial, the unimportant has 
 affected us like grandeur. The lack of occu- 
 pation in these figures abashes us as no re- 
 proof for inaction has ever done, and our 
 separate restless efforts to understand, to in- 
 vestigate, to be well informed — all these 
 praiseworthy anxieties lose their customary 
 respectable footing, and take on a reversed 
 color of contempt. Our activity becomes 
 shamefaced before an idle boy in stone who 
 N^vplays with an apple ! 
 
 10 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 Our point of view must not be confused 
 with that of the historian of art, who informs 
 us that all these actions were significant when 
 the statues were chiseled. It, of course, is/ 
 true that these seemingly unoccupied maid- 
 ens held a votive offering in their hands, and 
 by their presence before the temple reminded 
 every beholder of the donor's piety. The 
 athletic figures commemorated the Olympic 
 triumphs, than which nothing could have a 
 more serious meaning to a Greek mind. The 
 pediment groups represented the most stir- 
 ring combats in the Greek mythology, and 
 those dignified figures on the Parthenon 
 frieze were in the Pan-Athenaic procession 
 which of all things stood for the glory and 
 the culture of a city dedicated to Athena. 
 The historian would then say, " If these 
 actions seem trivial to a modern spectator, 
 he has simply failed to understand them." 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the Greek 
 II 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 sculptor expressed in his art the most im- 
 portant and profound ideas of his national 
 genius. But all our observations neverthe- 
 less remain as true as before. Even the 
 most tragic, the gayest, the most significant 
 thoughts and acts of life were to the Greek 
 artist tempered and made subject to the re- 
 straint of things as they are. He did not 
 strive beyond bounds, but, as has so often 
 been said, he chose rather to glorify his lim- 
 its ; and because this is also the spirit of 
 sculpture, and because thereby this universal 
 Greek spirit and this particular art have the 
 same essential ideal, the sculpture of the 
 
 y Greeks was their especial glory. All that 
 Greek artists did was good in this respect 
 because, to a certain degree, this doctrine of 
 restraint is the law of all art and of all life. 
 It is not, however, with the other arts the 
 absolute requirement that it is with sculp- 
 
 . ture. Therefore, although Greek architecture 
 
 12 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 is great, we can hardly say that it is un- 
 equaled. Greek painting — what we know 
 of it — is superb, but we can hardly say that 
 later men have not done as much. Though 
 Greek literature is unique in its beauty, there 
 have been literary Titans who broke its rules 
 and followed other models. But Greek sculpr ^ 
 ture is not only unsurpassed : it is unequaled. 
 For the world of art, sculpture is synonymous 
 with Greek sculpture — and why ? Because 
 the simple dignity, the detachment, the es- 
 sential preeminence of mere living lines and 
 movements, whereas it may not be all of other 
 arts, is the very kernel of sculpture. 
 
 To the modern art-lover, therefore, it is^^ 
 absolutely non-essential whether these fig- 
 ures were at one time religious, political, or 
 commemorative — or, indeed, whether they 
 signified anything whatever. We have lost, 
 nothing from the sculpture of the Greeks 
 by embracing a different creed. Far from 
 13 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 enjoying their sculpture less than they, per- 
 haps we enjoy it more ! If our admiration 
 of their work is so robust, with no admixture 
 of solemnity from the religious motives of 
 the sculptors, we must lay aside their mo- 
 tives as non-essential to the spirit of the 
 work. In the same way that a statement of 
 the evolutionary importance of the scents 
 of flowers does not explain their appeal, so 
 an historic account of the social and religious 
 importance of Greek sculpture is not in the 
 least an analysis of its essence. 
 
 We shall agree, I think, that it is not in 
 point to call a uniform experience accidental. 
 That which is inevitably present, as well as 
 the inevitably absent in all good examples 
 of a given art, must be regarded as the ex- 
 pression of some law, some deep demand, 
 however unconscious were the artists of their 
 obedience to it. We must begin, then, with 
 the most incontestable uniformity we have 
 14 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 noted in the sculpture gallery, and that will 
 be the actual material from which the statues 
 have been fashioned. 
 
 We find in any artistic expression that \ 
 some idea must be presented in material form -i« 
 to the senses. Both are essential, the idea and 
 the substance in which it lives. There must 
 be a harmony of the two, and in no art is it 
 so easy to separate them — to comprehend 
 our material, to name our idea — as it is in 
 sculpture. We have found that sculpture 
 expresses itself in ston e and bronze. These ^ 
 two materials have been selected from all the 
 possible substances which would have been 
 much easier to work, and while exceptions 
 in the way of wood, terra-cotta, and faience '^ 
 come at once to mind, they are in a certain 
 sense a class by themselves, which indicates 
 that they have never been quite admitted 
 into the family of sculpture in the fullest 
 sense of the term. We have records also of 
 15 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 statues in gold and ivory, though none re- 
 main to testify of their excellence. Never- 
 theless as we examine one famous gallery 
 after another, or study sculpture in the orig- 
 inal setting where that is possible, it is plain 
 that porous stone, marble, granite, basalt, 
 and bronze, either plain or gilded, are the 
 materials to which sculpture has consecrated 
 itself, more than to any others. We can- 
 not call this accident, nor yet convention, 
 since it has survived art periods of the great- 
 est originality. Nor can we call it wholly a 
 practical matter. Statues that must endure 
 the assaults of wind and rain required un- 
 doubtedly a durable material. But art forms 
 as well as other matters adapt themselves to 
 a situation, and why should a statue erected 
 to stand within a temple or protected shrine 
 be made as stoutly as if it were exposed to 
 the winds of heaven ? Many statues of an- 
 tiquity, and perhaps the greater number of 
 i6 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 sculptures to-day, face the necessity of with- 
 standing the weather as little as do pictures 
 or books. We demand a certain amount of 
 durability in anything, but our pictures are 
 not painted to defy the rain ; why should we 
 ask of the sculptor that his material be hard 
 and difficult to cut, for the sake of a dura- 
 bility that will never be put to the test ? 
 
 It must be borne in mind that we are not 
 presuming to say what were the conscious 
 motives of different sculptors in using stone 
 for their material. Artists, as a rule, are un- 
 conscious in proportion as they are success- 
 ful, and their motives may have been, even 
 to themselves, apparently guided by conven- 
 tion and practical considerations of all kinds. 
 We often think that we are doing a thing 
 for one reason, when to a dispassionate ob- 
 server it is quite evident that we are doing 
 it for another. So it is not the artist's task 
 to formulate why he does this or that. His 
 17 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 results may often be happy accidents. But 
 it is not as presumptuous as it may seem at 
 first, for one interested in the philosophy of 
 art to point out what were the real under- 
 lying reasons for an aesthetic choice, inde- 
 pendently of the artist's careless account of 
 himself We are not, therefore, in the least 
 assuming that we know the reason which 
 Phidias, Praxiteles, and Michael Angelo 
 gave to themselves for using the sculptural 
 material that they did. If they say, or if any 
 one says, that they did it merely from acci- 
 dent or convention or what you will, we 
 can only say, as we do to any other incor- 
 rect introspection from one unused to psy- 
 chological analysis, " We know better ! To 
 dissect mental states is our business, not 
 yours, and the account of an artist's mind 
 as it reveals itself in his work, which is his 
 life, is far more accurate than an introspection, 
 in which he is not trained and but scantily 
 i8 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 interested." Towering geniuses in sculpture 
 would not have followed a convention in ma- 
 terial, when its reason for being was gone. 
 That is not their way. If with other wide 
 variations in style, great sculptors have kept 
 to a constant uniformity in material, even 
 though they have protested that it was quite 
 accidental, it is obvious that there is an in- 
 herent harmony between their ideas and that 
 material. If they cannot detect such a con- 
 scious demand, they are simply poor psy- 
 chologists. 
 
 No doubt much of the poverty of aesthetic 
 research arises from the fact that psychol- 
 ogists and philosophers attempt to theorize 
 in an art field where they have no appreci- 
 ation. But that is only half the story. The 
 other difficulty is that artists and art-lovers, 
 who have the appreciation, attempt introspec- 
 tion when they are not trained. How natural, 
 then, that misapprehension should arise I 
 19 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 Our demand for stone or metal, aside from 
 their inherent beauty, is not therefore merely 
 because of a practical advantage, however 
 conspicuous that advantage may be in out- 
 door sculpture. We must make, nevertheless, 
 a very careful distinction between being dur- 
 
 / able, and looking durable. Undoubtedly the 
 suggestion of permanence which stone car- 
 ries with it is a very important part of the 
 sculptural idea. This would be as potent a 
 
 V factor in indoor as in outdoor sculpture. Is 
 it not true that the idea of ageless perma- 
 nence still breathes from a battered Victory 
 in stone, even when practical durability has 
 obviously been found wanting ? 
 
 Furthermore, some critics have suggested 
 that just the difficulty in cutting gives the 
 abiding charm to sculpture. We scorn the 
 easy victory over wax or clay, and only honor 
 a work, the enormous difficulty of which has 
 been overcome in conflict with a resisting 
 
 20 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 medium. This supposition stands the test 
 of reason even less than the other. A diffi- 
 cult technic is noble just so long as it is nec- 
 essary for a result, but exploited for its own 
 sake, it is trivial. A painter who uses incon- 
 venient brushes from choice ; a piano player 
 who exhibits extraordinary muscular control 
 in playing all his music with crossed hands, 
 excites our laughter. A sculptor who chose 
 a difficult material to show off his chiseling 
 powers, when a softer or lighter one would 
 serve his purpose as well, would merit the 
 astonished interest which we give to a trick- 
 ster, but not to an artist. Even the sugges- 
 tion that the cost of rare stones excites our 
 admiration falls to the ground when we re- 
 member that the rarer colored marbles have 
 not been chosen for the finest sculpture. The 
 more beautiful the stone in itself, the greater 
 delight it affords us as stone, but even a 
 duller stone is no less sculpture, 
 
 21 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 I am Inclined to think that the quality of 
 stone which we are all the time unconsciously 
 demanding is not so much its durability, cer- 
 tainly not its difficulty in manipulation or 
 its cost, but above all things its weight, and 
 connected with this — its size. If the statue 
 has too fragile a surface, it is inconvenient ; 
 if it cannot stand the weather, it must be 
 brought indoors ; if the stone is dull granite, 
 instead of translucent marble, it is not so 
 beautiful ; if it is of a softer sandstone, the 
 chiseler cannot be so subtle ; if it is of bronze, 
 the technic of construction is a different one. 
 But if it dwindles in size sufficiently, and 
 thereby in weight, it may still be beautiful, 
 but it is not sculpture. It is a cameo, a coin, 
 a gem, a carving, a lovely object still ; but 
 it is sculpture, strictly speaking, no longer. 
 ^Size and weight are so bound up in each 
 other that it is difficult to determine which 
 is the more fundamental of the two. If the 
 
 22 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 statue were of required size, but of some 
 material so light that no feeling of solidity 
 accompanied it, we should call it a poor se- 
 lection of material, and hence poor sculpture. 
 Even though wooden statues show a high 
 degree of beauty, and certainly have a greater 
 ease of manipulation, they have never ex- 
 pressed the sculptural ideal par excellence. Is 
 not this the reason ? However permanent 
 they may be from their sheltered location, 
 they never look entirely so ; and however 
 great their subject-matter, the pressure of 
 their lesser weight does not carry so profound 
 a message. On the other hand, as a marble 
 or a bronze dwindles in size, it does not lose 
 its beauty, but its classification. It may be 
 beautiful still, but in the fullest sense of the 
 term it is not a statue. Thus we do not call 
 coins and cameos, statuettes and figurines, 
 sculpture, without some modification in the 
 term. By the very diminutive endings of 
 23 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the words, we imply a variation from a 
 larger standard. How large or how small is 
 a different question. Just as Aristotle said 
 of tragedy, that it must be an action "of a 
 certain magnitude," so we may say of sculp- 
 ture, that other things being equal, a certain 
 size limit is implied. Life-size is not required, 
 for the figures of the Parthenon frieze, the 
 Orpheus relief, and the Mourning Athena 
 are far smaller than that. It seems, however, 
 as if reliefs could be smaller than free-stand- 
 ing statues, and still remain sculpturesque. 
 The stone or metal background of a relief 
 gives the figures their own scale, and lessens 
 the likelihood of comparing their size with 
 that of neighboring objects. In addition 
 to that, the background brings with it its 
 weight ; and I believe that we have not an- 
 alyzed the experience correctly if we leave 
 out the appeal of that quiet, heavy slab of 
 substance, apparently so ignored. Hangings 
 24 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 of silk or velvet behind a free-standing statue 
 also serve to throw the figures into relief, 
 but they do not tell the same story. Figures 
 of the same size as those in the Parthenon 
 frieze, against any but their own background, 
 would be a different matter. Thus even the 
 tiny reliefs of coins gain size from their metal 
 grounds, and do not so speak of smallness 
 as do free-standing figures which are even 
 larger. 
 
 We cannot definitely set a limit for size ; 
 and, moreover, at this point we may again 
 come into difliculties with the archaeologist. 
 Sculpture is always governed by the same 
 laws, no matter what its size. That which 
 the Greeks expressed in colossal statues, 
 they carved upon their gems. Their athletes 
 were of the same type in marble larger than 
 life, and in bronze three inches high. Here 
 again our critic is perfectly right. The point 
 of difference lies only in what we are to 
 25 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 call sculpture. We are analyzing what we 
 consider to be the quintessence of the art, 
 not what was intended to be such. In the 
 same fashion, when we use the term " art " 
 in general, we mean the best, the most 
 widely accepted forms of every type, not 
 those forms which in one way or another 
 have failed to be the best. Now that the 
 Greeks did not always adapt their ideas to 
 the absolute size of the object is true, but it 
 is their weakness and not their strength. 
 The little gold Nik^ driving a chariot, which 
 is in the Boston Art Museum, happens to 
 be an ear-ring. Multiply it a thousand times, 
 and modify it in no other fashion, and it 
 would decorate appropriately a monumental 
 arch. In fact it would decorate an arch much 
 more satisfactorily than it would an ear ; and 
 because its idea is not suited to its size, it 
 is not the best. The tiny reliefs, the gems, 
 the coins that are most successful, are not 
 26 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 those where the same idea is expressed in 
 the same fashion as in the larger type. That 
 any form can be forced into any size is 
 true ; but it were better not. Our point is, \ 
 then, simply that the sculptural size, the 
 size that can express anything that any 
 sculpture can, must be at least approxi- 
 mately twelve or fourteen inches high. Be- 
 low this, if the subject is modified, the beauty 
 and excellence may be as overwhelming, 
 but it is not in its strictest sense a piece of 
 sculpture. Or if the same idea is forced intoy^ 
 the size, it is not so good, and hence, from 
 our definition, not sculpture as the finest art. 
 All sizes may have developed together. 
 Our interest is not, however, in what they 
 were, or might have been, but in what they 
 are. The tiny in sculpture strikes no sculp- 
 tural note impossible to larger work. Its 
 message is as clear, but it is diflPerent. We 
 ordinarily take this so much for granted 
 27 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 that perhaps it has never occurred to us that 
 it is simply the change in size which makes 
 us call a relief a cameo ; or a statue, a carv- 
 ing ; and which makes our ideal demand so 
 different. All are strictly carvings, and while 
 a change of size is likely to mean a change 
 to a more delicate material as well, it is the 
 difference in size which really makes the 
 difference in classification, and the differ- 
 ence in weight which changes our attitude 
 from the more sculptural to that befitting 
 the so-called minor arts. If a decrease in 
 size so changes the sculptor's appeal, what 
 about increase? Could a statue become so 
 large that it would be a statue no longer? 
 If not a statue, what would it be ? Here we 
 can only theorize, since even the colossal 
 statues known to art are not so large that 
 they have lost their sculpturesque quality. 
 One can always reduce size by distance, so 
 that a smaller image may be cast upon the 
 28 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 retina; and whereas an architectural char- 
 acter would presumably be present in a 
 monumental statue, the presence of weight 
 is so essential to the material expression of 
 sculpture that additions do not trifle with 
 its effect as does decrease. A certain size and 
 solidity, then, must be immediately and ob- 
 viously presented to us in the material of 
 the essentially sculpturesque; and the two 
 abstract terms recall to us certain definitions 
 of substance itself. Philosophers and scien- 
 tists have always been trying to define what 
 we mean by " substance." What, if any- 
 thing, is the outer world finally composed 
 of in itself, aside from the modifications 
 which it appears to undergo in relation to 
 our sense organs ? The ancient and mediaeval 
 thinkers made a distinction between the 
 qualities which inhere in substance, as op- 
 posed to the qualities which it seems to have 
 by virtue of its action on our sense organs. 
 29 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 Thus color, taste, smell, sound, and tempera- 
 ture all depend on the state of our own nerv- 
 ous system. To the color-blind, the grass is 
 gray ; to the fever patient, the air is hot ; to 
 the dry tongue, there is no taste — and so 
 these sensations are illusory, and represent 
 only the secondary qualities of substance. 
 ^ ^ But the primary qualities — shape, size, and 
 solidity — were distinguished from these as 
 being more intimately bound up in the 
 nature of substance itself. It was argued 
 that, however relative a matter taste and 
 color, for instance, might be, size and weight 
 were so a part of matter itself that they be- 
 longed in a peculiar fashion to the structure 
 of substance as such. Thus from the Greek 
 Democritus, who deprived atoms of any 
 qualities but size and weight, to the later 
 scientific theorizers, who associated atoms 
 with no characteristic but that of weight, 
 there has been a greater intimacy of connec- 
 30 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 tion in thought between the idea of matter 
 and the primary qualities than between it 
 and those termed secondary, and size and 
 weight have been regarded as the essentials 
 to any concepts of matter. Modern scien- 
 tific theory goes beyond this, and reduces 
 atoms to something more elemental, and 
 modern psychology will not admit that per- 
 ceptions of weight and size are different 
 in any peculiar sense from the other sense 
 perceptions. But be that as it may, the only 
 point in which we are interested now is that 
 in the imagination, the customary concepts 
 of things as they occur in any mind, these so- 
 called primary qualities have a different men- 
 tal coloring to us than do other perceptions. 
 So an art, which shows its material aspect 
 so obviously, the material substance of which 
 we can recognize so easily, we should expect 
 to awaken in us a greater sensitiveness to 
 just those characteristics of substance, which 
 31 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 for whatever reason have been most inti- 
 mately bound up with our very conception 
 of it. It will be no surprise to find that wide 
 variations in volume, and hence in weight, 
 make more difference to us in our strictly 
 (kl sculpturesque feeling than the presence or 
 b ) absence of color, smooth or unfinished sur- 
 C face, greater or less detachment from the 
 background, or even more or less fidelity to 
 /^realism in the form represented. Of course, 
 marble sculpture, even when supposedly 
 \ white, appeals to us more or less by color. 
 It is a cream white, or a veined white, or a 
 translucent white; or, in the case of other 
 stones and metals, it may be gray, green, 
 brown, red, or almost any shade in plain 
 colors or varied tints intermixed. There is 
 evidence that the Greek sculptors of the 
 early and even the classic period went be- 
 yond this in often painting their marble in 
 broad saturated colors. Whatever the color 
 32 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 variation, nevertheless, however we like or 
 dislike these changes, sculpture stays sculp- 
 ture for us, in a way it does not when wide 
 variations are made in size. Green bronze 
 and gold trimmings make a statue no more 
 and no less than the whitest or blackest of 
 marble. But how great a difference in our\ 
 point of view toward a colossal Apollo and 
 a figure two inches high, however similar 
 the color may be, and however the outline 
 and beauty of both may approach each other ! 
 As we have already said in this connection, 
 it is not a question of difference in beauty, , 
 but in classification. 
 
 So much, then, for the material in which 
 our sculptural idea must find expression. Is 
 there also a limitation in the sculptural ideas 
 that can be expressed, or can any idea find 
 appropriate exploitation in the materials we 
 have discovered to be the essential medium ? 
 
 The statues we have studied in our tour of 
 33 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the gallery have been almost exclusively 
 representations of human and animal forms. 
 
 Conspicuously infrequent have been figures 
 of the dead, and nowhere have we found, as 
 we find, for instance, in painting, isolated 
 subjects from still life. In reliefs, especially 
 low reliefs which approach drawing, we have 
 seen representation of inanimate things in 
 the background. But as the relief becomes 
 higher, they disappear, and in free-standing 
 statues they have practically ceased to exist 
 in any other capacity than as ornament or 
 support for the living figures. Inanimate 
 things as statues by themselves we have not 
 found at all. Thus we have no free-standing 
 statue of a tree or of a flower by itself, of a 
 hillside or of a seashore. There are no interi- 
 ors in the round, with rich furniture or house- 
 hold objects, which make such charming sub- 
 jects for painting or poetry. And yet, why 
 could not sculpture, which has of all the arts 
 34 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 a tangible medium in which to work, express 
 material things more suitably than other arts, 
 where the translation must be more complete ? 
 Here, of course, we observe that a stone chair 
 is a chair and not the statue of a chair, no 
 matter how much the grain of another sub- 
 stance, like wood, be imitated. A statue of a \ 
 table is a table ; a statue of a vase is a vase — 
 and, therefore, so far as this kind of work 
 is concerned, we have no representation of 
 another idea, but another construction of the 
 subject itself. Its art value must then depend 
 on the beauty of its decoration and its pro- 
 portion — not at all on the faithfulness with 
 which it has caught the spirit of its model. 
 This, however, does not dispose of flowers, 
 fruit, and vegetables as sculptural subjects. A » 
 statue of a palm tree is no more a tree than is 
 a painting of one, and yet we have never seen 
 such a thing. In sculptural relief we see the 
 loveliest fruit and flower decoration possible. 
 35 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 The relief may even be very high, in the 
 decoration of capitals of columns and other 
 architectural work. But where a painter goes 
 beyond this, and devotes a complete art work 
 to a vase of flowers, or to a table covered 
 with still-life objects, we feel that such a sculp- 
 tural free-standing group would be a mon- 
 strosity — so much so in fact that it has 
 never crossed a sculptor's mind to try it ! It 
 cannot be all a matter of absence of color in 
 sculpture which makes this difference, for 
 nothing need have prevented artists from 
 coloring such still-life studies. But appar- 
 ently the subject-matter of any piece of in- 
 dependent sculpture must be a living form, 
 or one strongly suggesting the life that has 
 just left it ; and/ar from being more adapted 
 to express the material side of nature because 
 of its heavy material, it more than any art 
 must express life^ or the idea as far as possi- 
 ble removed from stone. 
 
 36 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 Let a poet or a musician, who deals in a 
 more spiritual medium, takefor his subject, 
 if he will, a tree, a mountain, or a crumbling 
 wall. But the sculptor who is handling a 
 block of stone must fashion from it a living 
 and breathing form. Art is a translation of 
 an idea into a substance, and just in so far as 
 the substance is a heavy one, the idea must 
 be vital enough to vivify it throughout its 
 mass. 
 
 But here one more restriction is necessary>s^ 
 Shall we argue from this that if living forms 
 must animate our stone, they must be as liv- 
 ing as possible ? Shall they always dance and 
 sing, shall their expression be of the liveliest, 
 and their draperies of the lightest, to counter- 
 act the material out of which they are strug- 
 gling ? Here our taste and our observation 
 rebel. The greatest statues are quiet. The 
 drapery, if there is such, falls as a rule in 
 dignified folds. No attempt is made to force 
 37 
 
\ 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the stone to be anything but stone — or, 
 in other words, the heavy substance, although 
 it is vivified, is not contradicted. The idea, 
 when well chosen, exhibits just enough of 
 liveliness to spiritualize its mass, without 
 quarreling with it. 
 
 We are impressed with the fact that Sculp- 
 ture is more than any other art the expres- 
 sion of restraint. It must avoid this and that 
 material, and be strict as to the size which it 
 chooses for its idea. It cannot represent this 
 inanimate subject nor that too brisk idea — 
 but above all, as it is the most classic art, 
 it must look carefully to the most perfect 
 harmony of idea with subject, and show ex- 
 traordinary strictness in the things it does 
 not do. 
 
 What, then, are the ideas which are suit- 
 able for Sculpture, after finding so many 
 that are not? Are we not forced to an un- 
 bearable monotony, if our subjects must be 
 
 38 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 chosen from the ranks of living forms, at 
 ease with themselves ? In a picture gallery, 
 were subject after subject to show as little 
 variation as is indicated in a sculpture cata- 
 logue, we should rebel. But here, strangely 
 enough, we do not rebel in the least, and 
 since the ordinary monotonies do not ob- 
 tain, we shall be forced to investigate the 
 meaning of the word. We call any group 
 of people monotonous when each member 
 of the company talks, dresses, and acts like 
 every other. We are fatigued in any circle 
 where the opinions, the habits, and the 
 standards of all its members are a foregone 
 conclusion, and we sigh for a difference, — 
 for a shock if necessary, — to reinforce our- 
 selves with the variety of living. With all 
 this, there exist certain constant similari- 
 ties, any trifling with which gives an abnor- 
 mality and not a gratifying change. We do 
 not complain, as did Humpty Dumpty in 
 39 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 "Through the Looking Glass," that more 
 people have not been made distinctive by 
 having two eyes on the same side of their 
 nose! We do not ask that social monotony 
 be varied by walking on hands instead of 
 feet, or painting our faces the color of jade. 
 We demand individual variation within a 
 constancy of type. Therefore it is tiresome 
 to reiterate the same remarks, but not to 
 consort always with vertebrates; because 
 conversation is an individual matter and 
 should be varied, and backbones are typical 
 matters and should be as uniformly regular 
 as possible. Now, it is wholly a matter of 
 the point of view whether you fasten your 
 attention on the individual or on the typical 
 aspect of any matter. Both sides of the ques- 
 tion must be always present to a certain ex- 
 tent, but the emphasis is different. That is, 
 every art object is an individual existence, 
 no matter how typical in conception ; and 
 40 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 just as truly all art which is truly great points 
 beyond the fleeting individual emotion to 
 the type of which it is a part. Nevertheless 
 the emphasis varies greatly, and sculpture, 
 in its essence, is the art expressive of typi- 
 cal values. After all that we have said that 
 it does not do, at last we affirm positively 
 that which it does. The figures of sculpture 
 are not engaged in so-called significant ac- 
 tions, because those are individual matters. 
 Your traveling, or singing, or banking, or 
 teaching are the pursuits which represent 
 the more important aspects of life to you as 
 individuals. But the statues, as we noticed at 
 the beginning, are standing, sitting, leaning, 
 watching, holding, playing, living, or per- 
 haps dying, in a fashion as far as possible 
 removed from individual application, but 
 which expresses, if we catch its message, the 
 absolute dignity of life as such. Man him- 
 self is more than anything he does. Our 
 41 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 separate actions are, after all, two thirds 
 fussiness, and the superb dignity of these 
 sculptured maidens who clasp a belt or bind a 
 sandal, the repose of those serene athletes 
 who stand or bend so easily, and who refuse 
 to commit themselves to more, is an eternal 
 proud assertion that life itself, not its pur- 
 suits, is the greatest reality. There is a mag- 
 nificence in this high simplicity which is in 
 some respects more touching than the most 
 individually impassioned lyric. If we apolo- 
 gize for anything, let it be for our lacks or 
 abnormalities, not for the splendid vital 
 postures and movements which unite us with 
 the race. We are both individuals and mem- 
 bers of a type — the emphasis is ours to 
 make, and thus has sculpture chosen. Could 
 any material so express our bond with nature 
 and with each other as blocks of the earth 
 from which we sprung? 
 
 All that we have said does not in the least 
 42 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 prevent sculpture from being an art in which 
 portraiture is possible, and portraiture of 
 the highest order. But just as any great 
 portrait, in whatever material, gives through 
 the individual features the universal type of 
 which it is the expression, so sculpture does 
 it even more. There is, in the very weight 
 of its stone, a suggestion of the pressure of 
 that human family for which one man has 
 been chosen to be the symbol. One must\ 
 come away from any sculptural display with 
 a sense of the magnificence of the human 
 heritage strong upon him, and it is the 
 nicely adjusted harmony of the idea with the 
 substance which brings this result to pass. / 
 
 We cannot have failed to notice in our 
 tour through the gallery of sculpture that a 
 head, a torso, a bit of decoration even, is 
 treated with a curious respect. In fact, sculp- 
 ture, in spite of the apparent durability of 
 material, is likely to be, more than any other 
 43 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 art, in a fragmentary condition. We are little 
 disturbed, or at least not too much shocked, 
 by the battered condition of a large part of 
 classic sculpture, to find in it a splendid beauty 
 notwithstanding. Is there no limit to the ex- 
 pressiveness of a stone ? A man's head, his 
 foot, his trunk are but mutilated parts of his 
 whole body ; but a head in sculpture is not 
 a mutilation, but a complete thing. In coins, 
 a head more often than not is chosen as com- 
 plete design, and evokes no impression of 
 fragmentariness. Moreover, although other 
 isolated parts of the body are seldom chosen 
 for separate treatment, if time and hard us- 
 age have unhappily destroyed the rest of the 
 figure, we can treat such a fragment as if it 
 were a whole. We forget the absence of the 
 legs of the Hermes, and of the heads of the 
 figures on the Parthenon pediment. We re- 
 gret their loss, as we should regret the loss 
 of any great art work, but their absence does 
 44 
 
SCULPTURE 
 
 not vitiate the appeal of what remains. Any 
 part of the body which can enough express 
 the meaning of the whole to give a fair idea 
 of what the rest would be, can be called a 
 sufficiently complete expression of a living 
 value to stand as an art work on its own 
 merits. Thus the face without the nose, or 
 without the cranium ; the torso without the 
 limbs, or the head without the torso, can all 
 express a complete living value, which a nose 
 without a face or an arm without a hand can- 
 not do. Without a sufficient admixture of 
 life, and living lines in the material, the stone 
 has turned to stone again. 
 
 Is there any possibility of summarizing 
 this discussion? We have tried to under- 
 stand a little of the sculptural demand which 
 underlies the matter and the idea of this art, 
 which represents as perhaps no other does 
 an age-long human experience. No defini- 
 tion can expound its essence, and no for- 
 45 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 mula can bind it. Yet for the sake of a clear, 
 even if imperfect parting concept, let us try- 
 to gather up the loose ends and epitomize 
 our results. We have limited the substance 
 in which sculpture may fittingly be ex- 
 pressed; we have limited the ideas, the action, 
 the emotion which is fitting to the substance, 
 and we have pointed out the bond, and the 
 gulf, by which sculpture is respectively 
 united with and separated from the nature 
 which is her model. Let us conclude then 
 by a formulation of our results : — 
 
 Sculpture is the representation of a certain 
 magnitude, in stone or other heavy material, 
 of a complete expression of a living form ; 
 where the idea harmonizes with the material, 
 by expressing no action or passion that is 
 uncontrolled, but where, through a simple 
 and universal bodily attitude, the grandeur 
 of the life of the type is represented. 
 
II ' 
 
 THE MINOR ARTS 
 
II 
 
 THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 Perhaps there is no more paradoxical situ- 
 ation in the vocabulary of art than this : that 
 a public which can passionately admire the 
 minor arts cannot give them a better name ! 
 To label them as " minor " calls forth a pro- 
 test from those who find in this field of art 
 a nearer approach to perfection than in any 
 other. " Industrial " art is surely a misno- 
 mer, for many objects which fall within this 
 classification are no more industrially useful 
 than others which enjoy unquestioned rank 
 among the fine arts. " Decorative " art is 
 hardly more satisfactory, since so much 
 painting and sculpture of the best periods is 
 decorative. 
 
 The nomenclature is certainly faulty, and 
 49 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 yet there is, I believe, a certain justification 
 for the name we have chosen as our title, 
 against which we cannot rebel if we under- 
 stand It fully. 
 
 What are the minor arts ? We find under 
 this heading such diverse products as wood- 
 carving and terra-cottas, coins and mosaics, 
 glass- and metal-work, carved ivory and 
 jewelry, bookbinding, pottery and textiles, 
 and the question naturally arises, " What is 
 there in common among such a variety of 
 materials and forms ? " Surely a coin bears 
 no more resemblance to an embroidered scarf 
 or a carved desk than does a picture to a 
 statue — not so much, in fact; and yet, ac- 
 cording to some broad distinction, they are 
 all grouped together. To limit the field of 
 sculpture is comparatively easy, since there 
 is an almost complete uniformity in the ma- 
 terials of stone and metal. But in the minor 
 arts obviously no one substance can be the 
 50 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 binding tie between products of brass and 
 of leather, clay and silk ; so" we must look 
 for some kinship in the ideas represented. 
 Here again our search is unrewarded, for 
 now it is a Christ in ivory, and now a lily- 
 like bowl in glass ; here a bull delicately 
 chased on a gold cup, and there a palmette 
 on a shawl. We find an impartial interest 
 in natural and geometric forms, which is no 
 more exclusively common to this group of 
 arts than it is to painting or sculpture. In 
 fact the satisfaction of the minor artist (since 
 we must use the term) in his work is appar- 
 ently shared by the painter, for the latter 
 delights in painting the rich objects which 
 the former has already fashioned. Is it not 
 a paradox to label as " lesser " the artist who 
 produces the brocades and gold ornament, 
 the furniture and gems, with which the 
 painter decks his model, and which he is at 
 so much pains to reproduce ? 
 51 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 However this may be, we must apparently 
 look beyond conformity in material, or in 
 the objects chosen for representation, for a 
 satisfactory reason why all these diverse 
 beautiful objects should be thought of as re- 
 lated. We can detect no common demand 
 of color, size, or weight, for these arts range 
 from the tiny to the massive, with every 
 conceivable variety of surface, solidity, form, 
 and finish, according to the material of 
 which they are made and the place they are 
 / to fill. The reason sometimes given for 
 their common grouping is that they are, 
 despite their wide difference, alike in the 
 respect that they serve a practical purpose. 
 They are subservient to use, and because 
 of this harnessing to the ordinary pursuits 
 of life, they cannot be placed in the proud 
 circle of the arts which exist for their own 
 sake, aside from practical issues. While 
 there is undoubtedly a large measure of 
 52 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 truth in this distinction, it would seem as if 
 we were not wholly conscious of a tendency 
 to unfairness in our comparisons. We are 
 likely to put side by side in our imaginations 
 the finest of painting or sculpture with the 
 mediocre in the industrial arts, where the 
 subserviency of beauty to use, in the latter, 
 is unduly obvious. Let us rather compare 
 the best of Greek sculpture with the best 
 Greek coins and vases; the best Italian 
 painting with finest jewelry and tapestries of 
 the period, and at once the distinction loses 
 its obvious character. It is true that the 
 vases were made for wine, and the coins for 
 currency, but so, on the other hand, were 
 the paintings made to decorate walls, and 
 many of the statues were for votive offer- 
 ings. Now, neither statues, vases, nor coins 
 perform their function, but they all retain 
 their importance. When they stand in the/ 
 trying isolation of an art gallery, the minor 
 53 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 arts tell their story articulately with no help 
 from a former industrial value. It is un- 
 ' doubtedly true that the frescoes upon the 
 wall are every bit as useful to their owner as 
 are the crown jewels to the king, when at 
 long intervals he places them upon his head. 
 One art product decorates one thing, and 
 one another; why then charge the second 
 with an industrial purpose, when we do not 
 so charge the first ? Here it is possible to 
 make a distinction. Granted that any art ob- 
 ject may be used for some practical purpose 
 if it is forced to be so used ; the minor arts are 
 deliberately fashioned with such a purpose 
 in view, and any divorcement from their in- 
 tended function is wholly artificial. The re- 
 moval of the industrial art object to an art 
 gallery amounts only, we might say, to an 
 admission that we are too busy or too poor 
 to afford such things for daily handling. On 
 the other hand, there is no such artificiality 
 54 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 in the painting wrenched from the wall it 
 was made to decorate. A wall is a wall, no 
 matter where. To decorate it is but a shadow 
 of usefulness in any case. Therefore, the 
 sacrifice in a changed setting in the latter 
 case is a negligible quantity. But the place 
 for coins is in a wallet, or slipping through 
 one's fingers ; the place for glass and pottery 
 is on a well-decked table, with milk and 
 honey glimmering within. If not where they 
 were meant to be, we lose the piquancy of 
 their workmanship, whereas a painting or a 
 statue need be only where it has a good 
 light and a fair approach. 
 
 It will be admitted, however, that there 
 is a very wide variation in such practical util- 
 ity. Some industrial arts are undoubtedly 
 very useful in gaining a livelihood for others 
 besides the artist who makes them, while 
 others are as vaguely usable as the most 
 disinterested major arts could be. 
 55 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 Why is the richly ornamented frame of 
 an altar-piece any more ■practical than the 
 painting within ? The frame is needed for 
 the picture, but so is the picture for the 
 frame. Both are lovely objects. Both serve 
 the purpose of decorating a shrine. Both are 
 sufficiently good to retain their merit if 
 transferred to another setting ; and whereas, 
 for other reasons, we are justified in calling 
 the painting as much more important as we 
 like, it would hardly seem that the basis of 
 distinction were practical, industrial useful- 
 ness. 
 
 Another thing has been very evident in a 
 mere naming of the industrial arts. There is 
 no abstraction in their titles as there has come 
 to be in the so-called fine arts. Instead of 
 " sculpture " and " painting " of somethings 
 with a vagueness as to what, and the still 
 further indefinite character of the terms 
 "literature" and " music,** we have a brisk 
 
 56 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 concreteness in the material of the art — 
 wood, metal, glass, clay — which indicates 
 at once that here is the centre of our inter- 
 est. The other arts must have material ex- 
 pression no less than these, but they have 
 not considered the material of such para- 
 mount importance that it must be named 
 as the essence of their whole work. Thus a 
 minor artist may be frankly a gem-cutter ; 
 while a sculptor does not perhaps recognize 
 himself at once as a stone-cutter. At any 
 rate, whatever his own fondness for his 
 material, the rest of the world does not 
 call him such, and here we have struck one 
 important note of difference. 
 
 Vocabulary is after all a sensitive indica- 
 tor of thought — or at least of the absence 
 of it. If minor artists have never separated 
 their work from their material enough even 
 to name the art which they pursue, the 
 chances are that the substance which they 
 57 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 handle remains a factor in their imagination 
 of supreme importance. A name may be 
 given to their products in terms of the use 
 to which they will be subjected : as, furni- 
 ture or bookbinding; or in terms of the 
 material of which they are made : as, gems, 
 brasses, blown glass, or terra-cotta. But there 
 is apparently no way to indicate such an ab- 
 straction as that of painting and sculpture, 
 where the process and the material have grown 
 together in the connotation of the term; as 
 that of literature, with its reference to deal- 
 ing in " letters "; architecture to building; 
 and music, denoting by its name only an 
 art watched over and inspired by the muses. 
 If the industrial artists had so looked 
 upon their art that the idea or activity which 
 it embodied took rank above the particular 
 material of which it was fashioned, such a 
 point of view would have become crystal- 
 lized in language. 
 
 58 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 To admit, then, an especial emphasis in"^ 
 thought upon the material which passes 
 through the workman's hands is the first 
 step toward penetrating to the principle in- 
 volved. This in no way indicates inferiority, 
 but simply a diflFerence in the manner of 
 approach. All artists must feel the utmost 
 sensitiveness to the subtle appeal of the 
 substance which they handle, and to feel it 
 more acutely is of itself no indication of 
 a materialistic mind, but rather of more 
 delicate susceptibility. 
 
 It seems as if the nations that took sub- 
 stance more seriously were rewarded by a 
 skill in its invention and manipulation, that 
 we of the Occident, who feel more sharply 
 the cleavage between mind and matter, spirit 
 and body, could never have. A philosophy, 
 for instance, with a settled conviction that 
 God is in everything, for " when me they 
 fly, I am the wings," does not share in our dis- 
 59 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 tinction between creator and created things. 
 Whether causally connected with this or not, 
 the inventions of the East display a genius 
 for detecting the possibiHties of mere matter 
 which we do not share. Take, for instance, 
 textiles, where the idea represented is per- 
 haps as difficult to separate from the material 
 as in any of the industrial arts. There may 
 be pictorial representation in the weaving, 
 or there may be simply the dumb beauty of 
 texture and surface and color, but by their 
 very names our more beautiful textiles are 
 branded with their Eastern origin : Pongee 
 and rajah, crepes and cashmeres, Persian 
 carpets, India mulls, scarfs from Egypt, 
 and chuddahs from India. What invention 
 in textiles has the Western world, with its 
 greater development in literature and music, 
 to offer in comparison ? It cannot invent a 
 beautiful substance because it does not 
 understand it, and in its heart despises even 
 60 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 while it admires. A man's or a nation's phi- 
 losophy is the most important thing about 
 them, and until both honor substance, and 
 see the idea of material power behind its 
 actuality, neither man nor nation will ever 
 become preeminent in the minor arts. ^^ 
 
 So much, then, for the materials of these 
 arts — as wide a range as there are beautiful 
 substances to be found or fashioned. 
 
 What is the artist to do with his material 
 when he finds it? He must not only exploit 
 its own beauties, but, as in the other arts, he 
 must there embody some idea which by its 
 harmony with the substance lives in it in a 
 way that makes all observers feel that here is 
 its inevitable setting. If we look through the 
 industrial arts, we find the range of ideas 
 expressed in them as wide almost as the 
 materials. 
 
 Moreover, as the list of subjects indicates, 
 there is a strong suggestion with each of 
 6i 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 these art objects that something is to be 
 done with it. It may be as distinctly useful 
 an action as clothing the person, or as re- 
 motely practical as slipping a ring on the 
 finger, or hanging a rug on the wall. But 
 its position is always relative. To be seen to 
 the best advantage, there is an appropriate- 
 ness about its being seen in one place rather 
 than another ; on a table or in a window, 
 around the neck or on the floor ; and despite 
 the fact that good industrial art can stand 
 alone, only in the place for which it was 
 designed can we get its full charm. 
 
 Perhaps nothing will illustrate so clearly 
 this range of subject-matter as to contrast 
 it with the subjects common to sculpture. 
 There we find man in his essential aspects, 
 not man in his diverse activities ; man in his 
 universal nature which we all share, not in 
 his occupations in which no two of us are 
 alike. 
 
 62 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 Here seemingly we have just the reverse. 
 We are not now interested in what man is, so 
 much as in the innumerable things which he 
 does ; the things he handles, and reads, and 
 eats from, and sits upon, and looks out of, 
 and kneels upon, and laughs at, and hunts 
 with, and in which he arrays himself, his 
 family and his house. 
 
 Just what sculpture never does, the minor 
 arts do. They embody the ideas of man's 
 infinite activities. They illustrate for us the 
 habits of a people as nothing else could / 
 possibly do. 
 
 But are we not here involved in a contra- 
 diction ? We decided earlier in our discussion 
 that it was not in point to give as the distin- 
 guishing mark of the minor arts that they 
 were practically useful, for many of them are 
 not so. Here, on the other hand, we seem 
 to be saying that it is their embodiment of 
 the idea of man's activities that gives them 
 
 63 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 / their distinctive classification. Is it not the 
 same thing? If these arts mirror an artist's 
 attention as centred upon human activities, 
 and if he suggests them in art forms which 
 may enable a man to live them out, is not 
 that the same thing as to call them practically 
 
 \^ useful? 
 
 Here, however, an important distinction 
 must be made. 
 
 We have granted already that the minor 
 arts bear a special relation to the place they 
 were intended to occupy. They demand, by 
 their very form, that the activity which they 
 suggest be carried out. But that is very dif- 
 ferent from practical usefulness. That a 
 stained-glass window cries out to have the 
 light shine through its vivid panes ; that a 
 heavy ring implores to be handled ; and that 
 a rich shawl sighs for its breadth to be gath- 
 ered into folds and its colors reflected on 
 Itself, seems as far removed from bread-and- 
 64 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 butter pursuits as for a poem to prefer articu- 
 lation by a good voice to distortion by a 
 cracked one. 
 
 What do we mean by usefulness when we^ 
 watch the color of tea in a porcelain cup or 
 fondle a leathern volume with illuminated 
 pages? If all we cared to do was to drink 
 the tea or look out of the window or read 
 the book, then why go to the trouble of 
 making the porcelain, the glass, and the 
 leather beautiful? 
 
 To accomplish an action and get through 
 with it is all that most of us care for, and 
 the arts of our country show it. In reality 
 the lovely binding embodies the idea of 
 reading, the cup is the quintessence of tea- 
 drinking, the window stands for the spirit 
 of " windowness " — aside from the fact of 
 whether we wish to use it to Improve the 
 ventilation or not. 
 
 Paradoxical as it may sound, these arts, 
 6s 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 instead of standing for practical issues, stand 
 for exactly the reverse 1 This beautification 
 of the daily tools of living is not a practical 
 matter, practical in the sense of ministering 
 thereby to our bodily life, but it is a purely 
 ideal one. In so far as the ordinary tools are 
 lovely, we for ever so slight an instant forget 
 to use them, and look at them instead. We 
 are not content that a really beautiful neck- 
 lace be always unseen by ourselves upon our 
 own necks, but we let it slip through our 
 fingers endlessly to watch the lights therein 
 V — and then omit to wear it. Instead of 
 thumping impatiently on the wrought bronze 
 knocker for an answer, we are beguiled by 
 its beauty into forgetting our errand. A 
 carven chair demands at least another chair 
 for one to sit in while he gazes at the rich- 
 ness of the first, and who does not pause 
 before stepping upon a beautiful rug and 
 hesitate to subject it to so mean a purpose? 
 66 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 For practical drinking, give us a stout mug 
 that will not break, and that will keep its 
 heat or cold, not a delicate shell that brooks 
 no rough treatment and whose transparency- 
 distracts our thirst. For practical currency- 
 give us mediocre bits of metal, where our 
 satisfaction in the handling is wholly relative 
 to the mint value, and whose beauty of de- 
 sign will never tempt us to expose it when 
 it is not in use. Surely to keep out the light, 
 there are many materials more substantial 
 than lace or embroidery, and who can look 
 in or out of a stained-glass window ? 
 
 It is obvious that these objects are far 
 from practical in the sense of making more 
 successful the pursuits to which they are 
 dedicated. Human attention is a rigorously 
 limited affair, and when it is directed to the 
 graving on a knife or fork, it cannot so de- 
 vote itself to wielding them. When it is lost 
 in the contemplation of the enamel on a 
 67 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 buckle, the clasp remains unfastened, and 
 wheels of industry go round again only when 
 the representative idea of buckling and eat- 
 ing and sitting at a table has been forgotten, 
 and the actual operation has begun. 
 
 ^/ Thus it is that the minor arts make for 
 a slower, less practical life. They put the 
 brakes on restless transactions which are 
 concerned only with ends to be gained for 
 the advantage of the doer, and by giving 
 him pause as he fingers each tool in the proc- 
 ess, the idealism of the manifold interests 
 
 ^ of life comes home to him. He forgets the 
 bargain and the hunt, which are after all 
 relative matters and must soon be done 
 again, and instead he loses himself, for ever 
 so short a time, in the idea of the pursuit, 
 its infinite human interest, and therewith 
 the activity becomes not relative but eternal. 
 The materialism of any age begins, not when 
 men are held periodically in the spell of the 
 68 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 grandeur which is typified by their tools, 
 but when they are deluded' into thinking 
 that the tools are nothing, and that some 
 material result of the process is the reason 
 for it all. ^' 
 
 To regard a dinner as solely a matter of 
 food and the disposing of it is the practical 
 point of view. To look upon the shapes of 
 the dishes and their texture as symbols of 
 the kinds of substance that are placed within, 
 and as indicating the physical laws which 
 govern the way they must be served and 
 eaten, puts an idealistic touch on a necessary 
 occupation and makes acceptable a less 
 redundant repast. 
 
 With such a range of exquisite materials, 
 and such an abundance of ideas to express, 
 how could it ever happen that these arts 
 were labeled minor ? There is no less skill 
 in making, and no less time required to bring 
 such art objects to perfection. It may take 
 
 69 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 longer to build a cathedral or paint a fresco 
 than to fashion a goblet ; but, on the other 
 hand, the goblet may be longer in the mak- 
 ing than a poem or a melody. Art is long in 
 any case, and any attempt to measure the 
 preeminence of an art by such a time-scale 
 would be certain to end in ineffectual dis- 
 tinctions. We cannot say there is less beauty 
 in the minor arts ; indeed, there is often a 
 perfection about a coin or a bit of embroidery 
 that more imposing work, by the very am- 
 bition of its attempt, finds impossible to 
 reveal. 
 f Yet, despite all this, I believe that the 
 distinction between the major and the minor 
 arts is based upon a vital and universal dif- 
 ference in emotional approach, and that it 
 is of this difference that we are inarticulately 
 aware when we pass from one type of art to 
 the other, and vaguely feel that the atmos- 
 phere has changed. I believe that this differ- 
 70 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 ence of attitude is indicated very clearly in 
 the facial expression of a company which 
 passes from the contemplation of painting 
 and sculpture to a collection of gems, tex- 
 tiles, or porcelains. They come from the one 
 elated but serious, chastened somewhat by 
 its grandeur and quiet. To use Aristotle's 
 term there has been a katharsis of the mind 
 through the weight of sublime things, but A 
 as soon as the scene has changed and they 
 are faced with the products of the industrial 
 artist, they shift from an attitude of awe to 
 one of unmixed delight. 
 
 There is no less respect for the skill of the 
 artist or for the value of his work ; but his 
 message is always joyous, full of abundant 
 life. Such pleasure is contagious. The spec- y; 
 tator literally smiles as he fingers the smooth 
 carving or the sinuous links of a gold chain. 
 Moreover, he longs to handle them, almost^ 
 to play with them — faintly echoing by this 
 71 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 very desire that pleasure with which the 
 craftsman gave the burnished surface in the 
 beginning, and toyed with his work before 
 \ it left his hands. This pleasure in physical 
 contact with the minor arts is the natural 
 impulse to handle any delightful form, an 
 impulse which in the major arts is only coun- 
 teracted by our reverence for the dignity of 
 the idea conveyed. 
 
 With the minor arts, on the contrary, our 
 delight is without admixture of awe. Our 
 respect is no less. It may in certain cases be 
 more. But just as the most devoted subject 
 in the realm might feel an impulse to pat the 
 cheek of the royal baby whom he adored, 
 whereas he would only bow before the king, 
 so we may love the minor arts as much as 
 we will and marvel at their perfection, but 
 however we love them, we are not afraid of 
 them ! They speak to us only of joy, and 
 joy unmixed with other emotions cannot 
 72 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 stay our hand. Just here, I believe, is the 
 province of the minor artist and his limita- 
 tion. No art sings so exclusively of happi- / 
 ness and delight in living as does this which 
 deals in the fashioning from exquisite mate- 
 rials the typical tools of the life of humanity. 
 Living, as we do, in a country where the 
 craftsman is never seen at work, we lose sight 
 of this prime factor of his creative impulse. 
 But what could be more cheerful than the 
 shop of an Italian gold or silversmith, a gem- 
 cutter, a wood-carver, or (the economic con- 
 ditions being satisfactory) of a lace-maker? 
 If they in ever so slight a degree have caught 
 the spirit of the real artist, it is their joy 
 which they put into their work. No heavy / 
 brows, such as we have by common consent 
 relegated to the dramatic author, no brim- 
 ming eyes, such as the lyric poet describes so 
 feelingly ; no grasping for intangible visions, 
 none of the melancholy of the Medici 
 73 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 tombs. But everywhere is a delight in things 
 as they are, an infectious gayety which does 
 not moralize, but catches the light in a thou- 
 sand colors and shapes, and brings a smile 
 to any face which does not hide a soul too 
 abstracted to note its compelling joy. Just 
 here is the abiding charm of the minor arts. 
 ^They ask no questions of fate, and we are 
 asked to face nothing but beauty and vibrant 
 life. And yet, because these arts not only do 
 not express sorrow and struggle, disappoint- 
 ment and agony, but because they cannot ^ we 
 turn from them as from fairies or archangels 
 and say that they are less than men. 
 
 If the criterion of any art is its perfection 
 in attaining that which it set out to do, these 
 minor arts would not be less, but perhaps 
 would take a higher place than those where 
 the struggle to express the mixed glooms 
 and triumphs of life has left a less finished 
 whole. 
 
 74 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 But If breadth of possible subject Is our 
 standard, the Industrial arts have chosen the 
 sunny side of existence, and have thereby 
 forfeited their share In the representation of 
 life as a complex of light and shadow. I can-;^ 
 not think of any circumstance which so epit- 
 omizes this spirit of the minor arts as the 
 placing of the bust of Benvenuto Cellini, 
 like a tutelar deity, to crown the arches of 
 the Ponte Vecchio In Florence. Across that 
 bridge stretches on cither hand the line of 
 cheerful little shops filled with gems of vary- 
 ing values, but of uniform brilliancy — from 
 the most sumptuous pearls to the humblest 
 turquoise — and brisk gold- and silversmiths 
 are fashioning jewelry from them with untir- 
 ing joy. Over the bridge, with its constant 
 stream of jewel-seekers, presides the rollick- 
 ing, the sanguine, the truculent, the self- 
 satisfied but beauty-loving Benvenuto, who 
 turned with equal readiness and enthusiasm 
 75 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 to knifing an adversary or graving the Lord 
 Almighty on a button ! Possibly Benvenuto 
 was not as perfect in his art as he confidently 
 supposed, but at any rate a great eminence 
 was possible for him, and a man of his tem- 
 per was thought worthy of mention as a 
 master craftsman, without that admixture of 
 solemnity which appears in the finer exam- 
 ples of the more serious arts. Could such a 
 man dominate music or poetry or sculpture, 
 even for a period of time, as Cellini has 
 dominated the Italian jewelers and craftsmen 
 for centuries ? As is the master so is the dis- 
 ciple. Contrast Benvenuto's attitude toward 
 life with the bearing of passion tempered 
 with melancholy which devotees of certain 
 fine arts adopt ! However conventional this 
 manner may have become, even a convention 
 springs from some root, and has a certain 
 meaning. 
 
 If we grant the truth of this observation, 
 
 76 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 the questions still remain, Why is it true ? 
 What is there in the nature of the industrial 
 arts with their beauty of material, their mani- 
 fold expression of man's interests and their 
 feeling for perfection, which prevents them 
 from being the avenues for the most som- 
 bre, sublime, or prophetic ideas that might 
 inhabit an artist's mind? 
 
 Perhaps it is not too much to say that the 
 two characteristics of the minor arts which 
 have been emphasized, the unlimited interest 
 in substances and the presentation through 
 these substances of the ideas of man's infinite 
 activities — just those characteristics which 
 are the rich field of the arts in question — 
 are, by the very structure of human nature, 
 their limits. It is the material world which 
 brings sorrow ; it does not alleviate it. What- 
 ever may be the cause of gloom — death, the 
 fear of it, obstructed plans, disease, poverty, 
 solitude, renunciation — all these experiences 
 11 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 come from the clash of material mechanical 
 laws with spiritual demands. Every one of 
 them means a tyrannical check imposed on 
 a too desirous soul, and why should such a 
 soul fly to more matter, even though it be 
 lovely, when the inner brutality of things is 
 tormenting the artist? 
 
 The major arts depend also upon mate- 
 rial. They show no less sensitiveness to its 
 beauty or brutality, but they limit their range 
 of material. Moreover, they may oppose to 
 it their idea, so that the whole story — the 
 opposition, the struggle, and the victory of 
 one or the other — may be expressed, and 
 the substance does not remain supreme. 
 
 Again we ask the same question : " Why 
 cannot the industrial arts do the same?*' 
 Because, as we have found, the ideas rele- 
 gated to these arts are all strongly suggestive 
 of man's activity, and men in grief are not 
 interested in action. 
 
 78 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 The attitudes of a sorrowful man are not 
 drawing soft garments through his fingers, 
 toying with gems, eating and drinking from 
 gold and crystal, hunting with inlaid mus- 
 kets, or handling rich volumes. Since these 
 activities are absent, his thoughts and the 
 thoughts of the fashioners of these objects 
 are absent too, and in such an atmosphere 
 of sadness, I venture to say that the minor 
 arts would neither be made nor noticed. 
 
 It is a fact of elementary psychology that 
 joy or agreeable mental states of any kind 
 have a tendency to send the blood to the 
 surface, to quicken the breath, and to in- 
 crease the muscular energy. All these bod- 
 ily changes can be observed in even the 
 slight changes of agreeable stimuli possible 
 in a psychological laboratory. How much 
 more are they marked in the real satisfac- 
 tions of life outside a laboratory ! 
 
 On the contrary, the disagreeable mental 
 79 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 states tend to deepen the breath and to de- 
 crease the muscular strength and the dis- 
 position toward expansive movement. Grant- 
 ing this lowering of bodily activity and tone 
 under the influence of unpleasant stimuli, 
 what would be the natural result? Inaction, 
 quiet, contemplation, repression, but never 
 the varied movements which every one of 
 the minor arts suggests. 
 
 A man in sorrow can sit motionless and 
 get the full force of the greatest of the fine 
 arts without adopting an attitude in oppo- 
 sition to his mood. His sorrow may be 
 alleviated without being contradicted. 
 
 The same man, on the other hand, can- 
 not sympathize with the industrial arts with- 
 out facing the constant suggestion of human 
 action represented as the supreme interest 
 of life. But material at ease with itself and 
 buoyant activity are antagonistic to his mood, 
 and he turns from them and calls the arts 
 80 
 
THE MINOR ARTS 
 
 devoted to them " minor," because in his 
 greatest distress they do not and cannot 
 sympathize. 
 
 Thus we can fancy the joyful human be- 
 ing as equally delighting in his pictures, his 
 statues, and his jewels, his dance music, his 
 lyric poetry, and his rugs. But his mood 
 changes to despair, and the major arts in- 
 stantly change with him. His sculpture and 
 architecture remind him of the abiding ele- 
 ments of humanity which survive all shocks./ 
 He sees the ravages of similar distress in 
 portraits and crucifixions. His poetry re- 
 sponds to a melancholy note even more 
 quickly than to joy. Not only a poem of 
 sadness, but the same blithe lyric that he 
 read before can change its emphasis by a 
 slower cadence or a different tone, and his 
 dance music can become a dirge if he chooses 
 and be all the more sombre by its contrast 
 with a dead gayety. 
 
 8i 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 But how about his jewels, his burnished 
 metals, and his rugs ? They do not lose one 
 brilliant color or reveal one hint of under- 
 / standing of any mood but their own. One 
 cannot dampen their suggested activity. 
 There they are, with no dark past, and ab- 
 solutely contradictory in every suggestion 
 to any mood but joy. 
 
 If the contemplator feels no obligation 
 to his grief, nothing could divert him so 
 quickly. But if he nurses his sombre view 
 of life, and believes his grief too sacred to 
 relinquish, he ignores these unsympathetic 
 arts until his mood has changed, and calls 
 them " minor " only because they are less in 
 range than his whole self. 
 
Ill 
 
 PAINTING 
 
Ill 
 
 PAINTING 
 
 If we are to analyze the art of painting by 
 the same methods that we employed in the 
 arts of sculpture and the minor arts, we 
 are embarrassed at the start by an apparent 
 change in the constitution of our subject- 
 matter. We find the measuring-rod which 
 has served us easily is now attempting a task 
 which it cannot so well perform. 
 
 Our first question is to be as before, " Of 
 what material is. our art constructed?" and 
 we are placed at the threshold of a picture 
 gallery and told to wander through it and to 
 answer the question for ourselves. 
 
 There are on the walls many canvases and 
 panels in wooden and gilded frames, with 
 paint applied in various manners. Some- 
 85 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 times we see pictures in colored chalks and 
 again the wall itself is decorated, the plaster 
 itself serving as a ground, or in some cases 
 the canvas is laid upon the plaster. 
 
 Turning from the material used to the 
 forms which are represented, we can detect 
 no uniformity in subject-matter, for every 
 possible object seems to be represented, 
 from the simplest portrait to the most 
 complex grouping in landscape or interior. 
 The inevitable answer to our first question, 
 *' What is the material medium of the art? " 
 must be, "canvas, paper, paint, oil, chalk." 
 But this answer has a strange sound, as if it 
 were a summary of the materials of the art 
 in only the most formal sense. To say that 
 stone and bronze are the materials of sculp- 
 ture, that gold and jewels are the substances 
 of the jeweler's art comes as no shock to 
 the dignity of these arts. But when we do the 
 analogous thing in the art of painting, the 
 86 
 
PAINTING 
 
 tendency is to protest at once, " Not oils or 
 pigments on paper or plaster,' but the forms 
 and colors of these pigments. The material 
 itself, save in its technical side, is of no im- 
 portance." What right have we, however, to 
 make any such distinction in painting? Of 
 course it is the color of these materials in 
 which we are interested, but so it is the 
 color and the outline of the gold and gems 
 that delight us in jewel-work, and the color, 
 outline, and surface of the marble which 
 satisfy us in sculpture. Why should we, then, 
 be forced to give the abstraction of color 
 as painting's material expression, when we 
 do not say of sculpture, architecture, or the 
 minor arts, as we well might, that their mate- 
 rials are colors, lights, shadows, or surfaces ? 
 Why cannot we state frankly that, as the ma- 
 terial of cathedral architecture is stone, metal, 
 and glass, so a fresco is built of plaster and 
 pigment; and why is notour statement as 
 
 87 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 satisfactory ? That it is not as satisfactory 
 I believe we shall agree, but we must in- 
 quire more closely to find what change has 
 
 /taken place. Why must we become less ob- 
 jective in a discussion of painting, and sub- 
 stitute for the term substance^ the sensations 
 of color and light to which that substance 
 
 . gives rise ? 
 
 We cannot for an instant believe that cer- 
 tain arts have a material element and that 
 others present an idea with no dependence 
 on a material medium. But it is obvious 
 that the arts of sculpture and architecture 
 represent not only an idea which in some 
 way peculiarly harmonizes with the medium 
 in which it lives, but they also exhibit the 
 spirit of the substance itself; whereas in the 
 arts of painting, literature, and music, this 
 is far less true. 
 
 ^ Thus a statue of a nude boy in marble or 
 bronze represents not only the possibilities 
 88 
 
PAINTING 
 
 of vigorous boyhood, but the poetry of stone 
 and metal. Even though the stone is pri- 
 marily for the purpose of exhibiting the 
 enduring spirit of eternal youth, the figure 
 is also to some extent a vehicle for exploit- > 
 ing the vitality of stone and metal. The ^ 
 human figure is thus not the only speaker, 
 but there is a duet of organic with the in- 
 organic, in which the less articulate stone is^ 
 by no means unheard. 
 
 The same is true in architecture, where 
 the ponderous battlement tells a story even 
 in ruins ; where size, and weight, and thrusts 
 — even lacking in structural plan — can make 
 an architectural appeal. Surely the material 
 of the minor arts can make this harmonious 
 but independent impression. Their materials 
 are often beautiful without formal arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 But when we approach painting as a fine 
 art, it may be questioned whether paint as 
 89 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 paint, canvas as canvas, plaster as plaster, 
 makes any appeal whatever. 
 
 The canvas and the paint must be present 
 to support the picture, as the bolts may re- 
 inforce masonry, but the effect of the paint- 
 ing has been independent of its material 
 medium in this sense. It does not combine 
 within itself a double message. An altar 
 piece does not interpret the spirit of the 
 saints and the spirit of paint. We do not 
 face the unhewn block and tubes of pig- 
 ment with the same emotion. With the 
 block of stone and the sculptor*s model we 
 have two spirits to harmonize, two voices each 
 chanting of its own essence. With the pal- 
 ette and the painter's model, be he the same 
 model in the two cases, a change has taken 
 place in our attitude toward the situation. 
 We have not two spirits, but only one. The 
 paint and canvas are wholly servants to the 
 model. The canvas is too humble to sing 
 90 
 
PAINTING 
 
 of canvas, and the paint has no message to 
 impart of its own inner self. Therefore,^ 
 we can see that, while painting is no less 
 dependent on her material than the arts 
 of sculpture and architecture, she is less 
 dependent on the spirit of her material or 
 upon the message of her substance. She 
 loses and gains by this difference in appeal. 
 She loses that grandeur in which a material 
 force, met face to face, will always clothe 
 itself, but curiously enough she gains a para- 
 doxical advantage by this change from a sub- 
 stance-idea duet to a purely ideal solo ! Since/ 
 she does not and cannot give us a mes- 
 sage from matter itself, she can represent it. 
 Since paint and chalk and paper and plaster 
 have so modestly withdrawn their own indi- 
 vidualities from the art product that as sub- 
 stance they can be ignored, at once by a 
 strange shift it becomes possible for paint to 
 paint itself; that is, to paint, if it will, a table 
 91 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 covered with paints, or to paint a repre- 
 sentative of any material substance which 
 it chooses, while sculpture, being the art of 
 inorganic substance, can never represent in- 
 organic things independently, but only that 
 which is the furthest removed from the 
 inorganic that is, the living form. 
 
 It is a curious compensation of the arts. 
 Express the spirit of material substance by 
 presenting it, and you sacrifice the possibility 
 of expressing it by representation. Or, on 
 the other hand, suppress the presentation of 
 material in the raw, and you may represent it 
 as much as you please. It is not a piece of 
 landscape from which a landscape may be 
 hewn ; not a boulder in which the spirit of 
 rocks may be expressed. But colored sub- 
 stances, made from one cares not what, can 
 represent the landscape and the cliff, and ma- 
 terial form without life becomes subject for 
 art only in a material which has ceased, so 
 92 
 
PAINTING 
 
 far as in It lies, to have a life of its own 
 at all. 
 
 For this reason we slip unconsciously into^ 
 the convention of calling color, and not the 
 colored substance, the material of painting. 
 We schematize our visual sensations accord- 
 ing to their hue, their value, and their satu- 
 ration, just as we formalize color schemes in 
 a laboratory. We abstract their color quality^ 
 from all their other sensory characteristics, 
 and have thereby, as it were, already idealized 
 our material before we have begun to use it. 
 Our material medium is thus becoming, not 
 less important in technic, but more subordi- 
 nate in significance. Our paintings may shift 
 from wood or plaster to canvas, without seri- 
 ous change, in a manner quite impossible to 
 imagine in sculpture. Moreover, the absolute 
 size, which makes such a difference in sculp- 
 ture and architecture, does not figure as sig- 
 nificantly in painting. Size again, as well as 
 93 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 weight, are distinctly substantial concerns. 
 Matter is expressing its own essence when it 
 impresses us by its rigidity, its size, its weight, 
 and pressure, and the fact that we classify 
 statues quite defensibly as figurines, at an ab- 
 solute size where a painting has by no means 
 become a miniature, shows that we are not as 
 sensitive to this factor in the art of painting. 
 Of course, in a general sense, there must be 
 a relation in the size of any art objects to the 
 size of human beings, or to the size, more 
 especially, of the picture which any object at 
 a visible distance throws upon the human 
 /retina. But in painting, the figures may be 
 large, as in a Michael Angelo fresco, or small, 
 as in a Mantegna easel picture; heavy, as in 
 painted plaster, or light, as in painted wood ; 
 huge in immediate foreground, or tiny on the 
 horizon ; and we think little of it. We begin 
 to note a change of size only when the whole 
 work approaches the cameo size of minia- 
 94 
 
PAINTING 
 
 tures. Because we do not concern ourselves 
 with size until so great a divergence from life 
 has taken place, we have proved ourselves 
 relatively indifferent to the spatial demands 
 of substance. 
 
 Apparently, then, it is not so pertinent to 
 inquire how large, how heavy, how small, or 
 how light our painted art objects must, or 
 may, be made. By passing beyond these de-/ 
 mands, we have gained a freedom of repre- 
 sentation so great that at first it may seem 
 unlimited. We have found that we may not 
 carve landscapes, but we may paint them ; we 
 cannot make statues of interiors, but we may 
 make pictures of them ; we do not (save in 
 decoration) carve groups of still-life objects, 
 but we may paint them ; we cannot to advan- 
 tage perpetuate in stone the individual tricks 
 of costume and activity, which we have a 
 right to represent in painting as much as we 
 like. Moreover, the living forms to which 
 95 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 sculpture devotes herself may also become 
 models for painting, with the nudity of a 
 sculptural background or the richness of the 
 minor artist's craft, according to the painter's 
 fancy. Is there anything, then, that painting 
 may not do ? Have we here an art with no 
 ideal limits ? 
 // To state a universal fact is to state an 
 obvious one, and in so doing, one ventures 
 perilously near to platitudes. We are, how- 
 ever, concerned throughout our aesthetics 
 with truths so obvious that they are ordinar- 
 ily overlooked, and the reasons for the limits 
 of painting and sculpture fall into such a class 
 of axioms. That they have »<?/been accepted 
 as axioms by all painters, one need only to 
 contemplate the recent Futurist paintings to 
 prove. Painting like sculpture can represent 
 objects only as they exist in one moment of 
 time ; but unlike sculpture it can represent 
 them solely as the light falls upon them, 
 96 
 
PAINTING 
 
 thereby limiting itself to vision alone, and 
 it can represent these objects- solely as seen 
 from one point, thereby limiting itself to two 
 dimensions. All this, contrary to the Futur- 
 ist creed, we still believe. Painting has the 
 world for its model, as it exists for rays of 
 light reflected from its surfaces. When these 
 rays are withdrawn, the painting and the 
 world for the painter has ceased to be. There 
 is for Helen Keller no world of painting as 
 there is of sculpture, for all the former art 
 has to express is concentrated in the medium 
 which can appeal to the eye alone. We have / 
 then one instant of time for our limit, and 
 we have one point of view chosen for repre- 
 sentation, from which we cannot vary. If we 
 wish to see the other side of the profile, or 
 to follow the lines of a figure as they change 
 from a front to a side view, we are again at 
 a disadvantage compared with sculpture. We 
 say disadvantage, but clearly we do not so 
 97 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 consider It. If we had wished an art of paint- 
 ing and sculpture combined, we could have 
 evolved a technic in the coloring of three 
 dimensions, for nothing but the fact that we 
 do not want such an art has prevented us 
 /'from having it. What then is gained by a 
 departure from three dimensions? Why is a 
 translation of three dimensions into two, for 
 certain purposes and for the expression of 
 certain ideas, a demand which in its ful- 
 fillment brings a tremendous advantage ? 
 Granting the sacrifice involved In a flat sur- 
 face and a one-sense approach, what Is our 
 reward ? We have found in a previous chap- 
 ter that every existing object has a double 
 avenue of approach, and that by each we gain 
 a valid though partial account of its nature. 
 By one we see the object In the light of the 
 broad racial characteristics which it shares 
 with all others of the same type. By the 
 other we gain a knowledge of the Individual 
 98 
 
PAINTING 
 
 differences by which every man and every sit- 
 uation is eternally distinct from every other.y 
 In the latter case we do not treat our model \\ 
 as a type of the athlete, but rather as one 
 youth running on a particular day of unique 
 light and shadow ; and in so far as it has 
 been individually treated, it has caught the 
 kaleidoscopic combination of an instant, and 
 crystallized it not as a racial, but as an indi- 
 vidual expression. If sculpture is particularly // 
 adapted from its material to the former type 
 of expression, and if painting is the more 
 romantic and individual art, the question 
 still remains — why? 
 
 The explanation of painting's greater op- 
 portunity in the art of catching unique sit- 
 uations lies, I believe, wholly in the sacrifice 
 on its part of three-dimensional matter, and 
 its consequent acquiring of the right to por- 
 tray material things. An enriched environ- 
 ment is necessary to bring out any individ- 
 99 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 uality. It is our reaction to a complex 
 setting that shows us to be different. It is 
 our reaction to a simple constant environ- 
 ment that betrays our racial similarity. 
 
 If we fancy ourselves, bereft of every sub- 
 stantial possession, upon the barren shores 
 of a desert island, our behavior would in all 
 probability fall into broad typical lines. All 
 of us, including our dog, would seek shelter 
 and food, and all of us would show fear or 
 stubborn endurance in a fashion that would 
 knit us closely into the struggle of all ani- 
 mate things for survival. If a group of trees 
 struggle for life on a windy hill, their leaves 
 show the same tendency to approach uni- 
 formity in size. That is, an impoverished 
 environment does not encourage individual 
 variation. Where the struggle for existence 
 is keen in a social group, the wages of the 
 different members show an artificial level, 
 with little allowance for individual differences 
 
 100 
 
shed 
 
 PAINTING' ,; 
 
 in talent. Here, again, an impoven 
 economic life makes for a low- estimate upon 
 any variations from the type. 
 
 Now let us fancy ourselves transferred 
 from the barren island to the complicated 
 interior of an ocean liner. We who had 
 bayed together with our dog for food and 
 friends instantly respond in unique fashion 
 to our new setting. Our first hunger ap- 
 peased, the bookish man flies to the library, 
 the bridge-player to the smoking-room, the 
 musical man to the piano, the shy man to 
 his stateroom, and the dog crawls under the 
 sofa. Material cards and printed matter, 
 stretched strings and a protecting couch, 
 draw from us in a moment those differences 
 which in a naked setting were only latent. 
 Neither side of our nature is more true than 
 the other, but each complements the other, 
 and the cool nudity of the statuesque, with 
 no background and no setting, expresses one 
 
 lOI 
 
THE .SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 as naturally as the rich complexity of the 
 painted setting does the other. 
 
 We may contrast the two types of treat- 
 ment in particular cases. Aphrodite with the 
 apple is a familiar figure in statuary, and we 
 have a possible Paris in the bronze youth 
 of the Athens Museum, who holds out so 
 gracefully a hand from which the apple (if, 
 indeed, it were ever there) has dropped. 
 Devoid of setting, these figures are types of 
 a goddess and a shepherd, a woman and a 
 youth, hardly in any special sense an Aph- 
 rodite and a Paris ; in any case with the 
 vaguest and lightest reference to a particular 
 situation. Compare with this the sumptu- 
 ous Rubens in the National Gallery in 
 London. Goddesses stand in a particular 
 relation to each other, and to the bronzed 
 shepherd who contemplates them. Soft sun- 
 light, rich drapery, sky and trees, lovers and 
 peacocks, all combine to make the setting 
 
 102 
 
PAINTING 
 
 of a moment ; a combination of figures re- 
 lated in a landscape and to each other as 
 they could never be again with ever so slight 
 a shift in the grouping or in the light. 
 
 Perhaps the difference in treatment is 
 never more striking than in the great repre- 
 sentations of death in the two arts. The 
 Crucifixion of Fra Angelico in Florence, 
 the Pieta of Titian in the Louvre, or the 
 touching Pieta of Bellini in Milan, all of 
 these represent the intensity of passion which 
 particular saints and sorrowing friends felt 
 in the moment of a great bereavement. The 
 unbearable parting, the protest against a 
 rupture of human ties, are all represented 
 in those and in other of the most famous 
 painted representations of death. 
 
 Equally touching, but as far as possible 
 
 opposed in conception, is the spirit which 
 
 breathes from such a relief as the parting of 
 
 Orpheus and Eurydice. No passionate pro- 
 
 103 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 test here, but the gentle crystallized gravity 
 of the whole race, that would not die, neither 
 would it live forever. Behind the figure of 
 the woman is the great human family drawn 
 in two directions — with Orpheus toward a 
 permanency of human ties, or with Hermes, 
 since an eternal human life is not desirable, 
 to a life with the immortals. It is this philo- 
 sophic perspective of sculpture, the mellow- 
 ing of a race experience through which it 
 views life, which relegates it so inevitably 
 from our houses to our temples and public 
 places. Our drawing-rooms are places of 
 individual reactions, and other conditions 
 being equal, it could as little support the 
 tempered philosophy of sculpture in its 
 decoration as in its conversation. 
 
 It may be urged that we are comparing 
 the sculpture of the Greeks with the paint- 
 ings of a different people, and that we should 
 rather confine ourselves to the two arts as 
 104 
 
PAINTING 
 
 they have found expression in the same 
 period among the same artists. Among the 
 Greeks this is difficult to do, since the only- 
 paintings we have are grave monuments, 
 where the style of painting on stone was so 
 manifestly borrowed from sculpture that it 
 can hardly be called a free development of 
 painting according to its own demands. In 
 the painting and sculpture of Italy, although 
 both arts are under a more romantic influ- 
 ence, what we have said still holds true. 
 We can see that it must be so. Since paint-\ 
 ing has sacrificed the presentation of the 
 depth of space, all spatial objects may be its 
 model, and the infinite variety of relations 
 between man, nature, and manufactured ob- 
 jects, as they appear at one instant, from 
 one point, and to one sense, are spread out 
 before a selective artist for his choice. The 
 moment chosen immortalizes a conjunction ^ 
 that can never be repeated. 
 105 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 How rich the variation in painting of inte- 
 riors and landscapes, sea and sky, sumptu- 
 ous costumes, delicate flowers and lowly 
 vegetables, jesting clowns and musicians, 
 saints and gods, hunts, tragic encounters 
 / and pastoral idylls. Every turn of the hu- 
 man, animal, or inorganic kaleidoscope, in 
 so far as it presents itself to vision, may be 
 represented, and with every shift of scene 
 there are infinite possibilities to the artist 
 of choosing this or that point of observation, 
 an emphasis upon the figures or upon the 
 setting, or upon the costume, or upon any 
 one of a thousand relations of one part to 
 s the other parts of the complicated whole. 
 
 Sometimes, as with Rembrandt, the focus 
 of attention is a piece of armor or a rich 
 scarf, or the high lights of the hair. Some- 
 times the contrast, like Correggio's, is of soft 
 human flesh against billowing gray smoke, or 
 against shining linen. Or there may be mys- 
 io6 
 
PAINTING 
 
 terious grottoes and still pools, the deep 
 tones of dusky drapery or architectural 
 vistas. 
 
 If an artist does not care for all this, if he 
 ignores the world of the inanimate, the tricks 
 of costume and the beauties of natural envi- 
 ronment, and if he confines himself to simple 
 human forms, he has a right to do so, but 
 he is a painter of the statuesque rather than 
 a painter pure and simple. It is easy to see in 
 Angelo^s painting the influence of a sculp- 
 tor's imagination. His lovely youths on the 
 Sistine ceiling are sculptural in conception, 
 and none but a sculptor-painter could have 
 thought in such terms of exquisite variety 
 of nude posture. The great painters whose 
 imaginations were wholly within their own 
 art have always reveled in human figures in 
 a setting of costume and of background that 
 forces a new creature, as it were, into our 
 world. La bella Simonetta would not be the 
 107 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 same lady without her little cap and neck 
 cord, her quaint costume and her severe 
 background, and she is, moreover, a paint- 
 er's model with the minimum of natural 
 setting. With such simplicity of treatment it 
 is hard to draw any line of distinction be- 
 tween the painted portraits and the sculp- 
 tured busts of the period, which, indeed, 
 were often colored. But if we advance into 
 a more elaborate complicated art, we notice 
 that the interest in "things" increases, and 
 that serious painting is far more likely to be 
 devoted to natural objects without living 
 figures than to living figures with no setting 
 whatever. The sacra conversaziones of Bel- 
 lini and of Mantegna, give us the poetry 
 of one instant of mellow sun, transparent 
 pools, and gentle saints. We pass by an 
 open door of a Dutch tavern or a prosperous 
 citizen's music-room, and there for an in- 
 stant we have the gay figures, the sunshine 
 io8 
 
PAINTING 
 
 through an open window, the shadows on the 
 wall, and the lights as they are caught on 
 the glistening surfaces of kettles or cabbages, 
 maps or guitars — all made immortal in one 
 luminous moment. All this is not less true 
 of the most serious decorative frescoes. In 
 the great Visitations and Nativities, Last 
 Suppers and Crucifixions, however much, 
 and rightly, one may emphasize the religious 
 or emotional significance of the situation, no 
 great "painter's painter" has ever for an in- 
 stant forgotten the landscape or architectural 
 background, the color and the drapery of 
 the costumes, the light falling on flesh and 
 gold and gems, the texture of linen, satin, 
 or brocade, the silhouetting of trees against 
 clouds, or any of the thousand secrets which 
 light on varied surfaces reveals. 
 
 It would seem that, while in free-standing 
 sculpture, inanimate nature cannot be inde- 
 pendently represented, in painting, if the full 
 109 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 individuality of a visual situation is to be 
 caught, this being the province of this art, 
 natural conditions not only can but must 
 be treated with full appreciation of their 
 significance. 
 
 We may now summarize the results of 
 our discussion and try to force it into a 
 formula : — 
 / Painting is the representation in two di- 
 mensions, by means of colored substances 
 upon a background, of inanimate objects 
 alone, or of these objects combined with 
 living forms, where, by the sacrifice of the 
 third dimension in space and the consequent 
 failure to present matter for its own sake, 
 the right is gained to represent all matter in 
 its complexity of relations, and thereby to 
 catch the individuality of any visual moment 
 V and to render it immortal. 
 
IV 
 
 MUSIC 
 
IV 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 In the art of music we face what is in some 
 respects the most difficult problem in our 
 aesthetical analysis. Here is a system of 
 sounds ranging from a simple succession 
 of pitches in an isolated melody to the most 
 complicated orchestral harmony, capable of 
 an emotional appeal which is equal if not 
 superior to any other art, and yet which 
 is singularly elusive when one attempts to 
 formulate its significance. 
 
 What does music mean ? What thought \ 
 does it convey ? How can we call intelligent 
 any exercise which consists of listening to 
 sounds which we are unable to interpret as 
 conveying a definite rational idea ? We may 
 enjoy a prelude, a sonata, a quartette, or a 
 113 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 symphony ; but after it is over, how can we 
 give a coherent account of what we have got 
 from it ? Why, if we cannot do so, have we 
 a right to consider that such an art conveys 
 a rational message ? 
 
 We are attempting in this analysis, as in 
 the former studies, to face the experience of 
 this art with the fresh eyes of a newcomer to 
 our planet, who is impartially sensitive and 
 curious, and who understands nothing. We 
 observe that music figures largely in the life 
 of the race. We see not only that it beguiles 
 the simplest labor or leisure, but that it is 
 thought worthy to occupy the attention of 
 men on the most important occasions of their 
 lives. They are christened and married and 
 prayed over and marched to war and cele- 
 brated and buried to music, as if in some 
 fashion well-ordered sound was the appro- 
 priate accompaniment of all the activities of 
 the human family. But why this is so is 
 114 
 
MUSIC 
 
 certainly not obvious. The first questions 
 are, as they have been heretofore in our study 
 of the new art, " What is music made of? " 
 " What is the material medium in which it 
 lives ? '* and as we review the instruments 
 by which music is produced, we find an 
 extraordinary list, practically an unlimited 
 variety of objects which fall into this class. 
 Any object which can be made to vibrate 
 regularly, and thus produce a tone, can 
 legitimately become a medium for musical^ 
 expression. Metal and gut strings, wooden ^ 
 and brass instruments, thin wooden reeds, 
 stretched membranes, and brazen disks; 
 these and many other contrivances are in 
 one sense the material of which music is 
 made. But the orchestral instruments lying 
 in a heap are not the real substance of music 
 except in a practical sense, for it must be 
 granted, at the start, that music, appealing 
 as it does solely to the sense of hearing, has 
 115 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 strictly no visible medium whatever. In so 
 far as bodies vibrate to produce audible 
 tones, these tones are the substance out of 
 //which music is built. When these bodies 
 (^ are at rest, the material of music has ceased 
 to be. 
 
 We are thus involved in a metaphysical 
 difficulty at the very outset of our discus- 
 sion. Have we a right to make this distinc- 
 tion between music and the visual arts? 
 Has the music substance ceased to exist 
 when the vibrating bodies are at rest and air 
 vibrations do not reach the ear, any more 
 than sculpture and architecture have ceased 
 to be when the light is not reflected from 
 their surfaces or when there is no contact 
 through the sense of touch? Obviously we 
 are confused by the same difficulty which 
 we met in our analysis of sculpture. We are 
 inclined to make a differentiation between 
 the so-called primary and secondary quali- 
 ii6 
 
MUSIC 
 
 ties of substance, and to assign an objective 
 reality to weight and spatial extension which 
 we are unable to feel belongs to color and 
 to sound. 
 
 Unjustifiable as any such distinction may 
 ultimately be, in any aesthetic analysis it is 
 certainly important. We are confident that 
 the material of sculpture exists apart from 
 the form which is chiseled from it, for we 
 feel convinced that the marble is still in place 
 when the light has been withdrawn or when 
 the figure is in ruins. We assert the same 
 of architecture. We become slightly embar- 
 rassed as we approach painting. We cannot 
 so easily name its material medium. If it is 
 color, we are not so confident that the colors 
 are still present when the light has gone, 
 however we may hesitate to say that the pic- 
 ture has, during the period of darkness, 
 ceased to be. We become more troubled 
 still with literature. If words are its material, 
 117 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 what are words, and where are words ? How 
 can we disentangle the substance of a word 
 from its ideal significance? And with music 
 we are completely baffled. We are inclined 
 to throw over our assumption that every art 
 lives in a medium of substance. Has not 
 matter that lives or dies with the idea, and 
 that occupies no space, reached the vanish- 
 ing point of material things, and is it there- 
 fore any longer valid for discourse? Logi- 
 cally it must be admitted that we have no 
 more right to assign reality to matter in one 
 case than in the other. Stone and metal are 
 known to us through ether waves striking 
 the retina, or through pressure stimuli bring- 
 ing about a chemical change in the touch 
 spots in the skin. Of the stone itself, aside 
 from these avenues of approach, we know 
 nothing. So tones are known to us by means 
 of air vibrations striking the basilar mem- 
 brane in the ear. When the air waves cease 
 ii8 
 
MUSIC 
 
 vibrating, we say that the tones, music's 
 material, have gone out of existence. When 
 the ether vibrates no longer in a particular 
 manner, we say that the light and color have 
 ceased to exist. The stone still exists for 
 another sense, — touch, — but so does the 
 musical instrument still exist for that same 
 sense. Why are we loath to admit that the 
 cases are similar? Simply, I believe, because 
 in the one case we are dealing with an art 
 that has an admitted bi-sensation approach, 
 and in the other with an art which is rigidly 
 constructed for the ear alone. 
 
 We see the curve in the stone, and we feel 
 the curve. On the other hand, we see the 
 color, but ^tfeel only the canvas and paint 
 when the light is absent. Hence our hesi- 
 tancy in saying that the color still exists. 
 So we hear the tones of a violin, but when 
 we feel the curves of the same violin with 
 our fingers, we find them the same no mat- 
 119 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 ter what the pitch or strength of the sound 
 may be, and when we feel or see the music 
 score, we know that it remains the same, no 
 matter how the music is played. 
 
 Since we have no clue by sight or hear- 
 ing to the stimulus of the sound sensation 
 to be produced, we protest that where one 
 sense cannot fill in the vacancy left by an- 
 other, the medium of the art has become 
 more ideal, in the sense that it lives strictly 
 for one sense, or not at all. 
 
 This importance of the auditory character 
 of music may be asserted in spite of the 
 statements of certain people that they are 
 able to enjoy music quite as much by read- 
 ing the score as by hearing it with their ears. 
 If they said that they enjoyed the mental 
 image of a dinner as much as eating it, we 
 might safely infer that they were not hungry. 
 If they enjoyed the memory of a painting as 
 much as seeing it, it would be hard for them 
 
 120 
 
MUSIC 
 
 to convince us that they were fond of paint- 
 ing. If they object to the disturbance of 
 music, and prefer a silent symphony read 
 through the eye to the undeniable noise of 
 a good orchestra striking at their ears, their 
 position may be defensible, but I protest 
 that they are not musical. The noiseless 
 world of such a group of accurate score- 
 readers would be an abomination to a music- 
 loving man, for music, if it is anything, is a 
 one-sense art, which has sacrificed its very 
 life when its one sense, and that alone,// 
 cannot be stimulated. 
 
 In another way music is a peculiarly ideal 
 art, in that it has sacrificed a material extent 
 for an ideal end. In so far as its one-sense 
 appeal is concerned, it shares the field with 
 painting. Color is as absolutely an affair of 
 the eye as is tone of the ear. But while - 
 bodies may vibrate from twelve to fifty thou- 
 sand times a second and produce audible 
 
 121 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 tone, the musical scale uses tones only which 
 vibrate between forty and forty-seven hun- 
 dred times, that is between the lowest tones 
 of the double bass and the highest tones of 
 the piccolo flute. Again it selects from these 
 certain tones which belong to a scale which 
 it has selected, and it rejects those which do 
 not. Our Western scale, handed down from 
 the Greeks, has eight tones whose vibration 
 rates bear a fixed ratio to each other. The 
 Chinese have chosen a different scale, the 
 Arabs another, the Persians another; and 
 because even our musical material is not 
 taken as we find it, as is our sculptural and 
 architectural material, but because it is ab- 
 stracted and idealized at the very start, we 
 can have little in common with the music 
 of another race whose intelligence has in the 
 beginning taken a different turn. We can 
 enjoy the sculpture, the architecture, and 
 the minor arts of the Orient far more easily 
 
 122 
 
MUSIC 
 
 than we can its music. Substance speaks 
 alike to all, but intelligences must learn to 
 understand one another. An idealized sub- 
 stance, which has been rigorously limited in 
 its possible extent before any construction 
 has begun, does not offer to its audience 
 nature in the rough, but offers natural 
 sounds schematized and classified in a serial 
 scale, with the last possible refinement of 
 material sound remodeled and whipped into 
 shape by a selective mind. 
 
 The intensity of musical sounds may range 
 from a zero point, where a rest may be of 
 the utmost musical importance, to a volume 
 of tone that may actually pain, and the tonal 
 quality is practically unlimited when one 
 considers the wealth of musical instruments, 
 and even the individual differences in timbre 
 between instruments of the same class. 
 
 It is not our purpose here to consider the 
 laws of pitch, intensity, and timbre varia- 
 123 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 dons, the rhythms and the repetitions, the 
 melodies and the harmonies which make up 
 music as we know it. All of them illustrate 
 the manner in which natural sounds have 
 been conventionalized and adapted to dif- 
 ferent musical intelligences, and thus idealized 
 in the very substance of the art. All of them, 
 moreover, leave us with the questions un- 
 answered, " What is it all for ? What mean- 
 ing is conveyed by this complex of sound?** 
 These are the questions which we must try 
 to answer. 
 
 With certain types of music it is not as 
 difficult to answer these questions as with 
 others. Where music and words are com- 
 bined, and well combined, we have as direct 
 and intelligible a message from the musical 
 accompaniment as from the poem which it 
 accompanies. In fact, in proportion as the 
 song of a certain type is well done, the in- 
 ' strumental part is no more an accompani- 
 124 
 
MUSIC 
 
 ment than are the words. Both contribute 
 equally to the effect of the whole. 
 
 The great German song writers, such as 
 Schubert, Schumann, and Franz, offer num- 
 berless examples of this direct representation 
 of a communicable idea in the accompani- 
 ment of a song. Thus the accompaniment 
 represents the actual sounds of nature trans- 
 lated into tone, or it presents a rhythm which 
 must sympathetically arouse in the listener 
 the same motor response that the situation 
 described in the words would arouse. 
 
 A delicate psychologist of the emotions, 
 the good song writer arouses the shudder, 
 the sigh, the unrest, the suspense of the 
 poet's words, by a rhythmic instrumental 
 sequence, that forces one, in so far as he 
 sympathetically listens, to fall Into such a 
 motor attitude. In Schubert's " Erlkonlg," 
 for example, the accompaniment begins with 
 the sombre beat of hoofs, and the rush of 
 125 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 wind in the bass notes. The measured tones 
 of the father contrast strikingly with the 
 high-pitched complaints of the child, and 
 against them both the smooth blandish- 
 ments of the " Erlkonig " speak as seduc- 
 tively in the accompaniment as in the poem. 
 Just as a person in fright naturally raises 
 his voice from a low protest to a scream, so 
 the child cries " Vater " the first time on B, 
 the second on C, the third on D, and the 
 last on an agonized Eb. In exact opposition 
 to this rising chromatic, the " Erlkonig," 
 tired of persuasion, suddenly drops his high 
 tones which he, like all of us, has assumed 
 as more pleasing to a child, and lapses into 
 a sudden low growl as he throws himself 
 / upon the boy. As Goethe translates the epi- 
 sode into verse, so Schubert has translated 
 the sound of the action into tone, and who- 
 ever does not hear it simply has not learned 
 his musical letters. Schubert's " Gretchen am 
 126 
 
MUSIC 
 
 Splnnrad " is no less perfect an example of 
 the representation in tone of .a rapidly whir- 
 ring wheel, of increasing emotion till the 
 wheel stands still and the spinning stops, only 
 to be drearily and monotonously resumed. 
 Perhaps Robert Franz is even more subtle 
 in his suggestions of the sound and move- 
 ment of things. I believe that there is noth- 
 ing in song accompaniments more exquisite 
 than the soft lapping of the water in his 
 " Lotosblume," or in his setting of Heine's 
 "Wie des Mondes Abbild zittert in den 
 wilden Meereswogen." Here is an exquisite 
 little lyric, in which the beloved one is com- 
 pared to the quiet moon, whose reflection 
 is shattered into fragments in the sea of the 
 poet's heart. The words are sung in an even 
 controlled melody against a delicate dissonant 
 accompaniment, which resolves from one 
 short restless chord to another, like the 
 broken ripples of the moon's reflection. 
 127 
 
 4^ 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 Nothing could be more delicately done to 
 force the listener into a gentle, fanciful un- 
 rest than this succession of dissonant chords 
 over which the melody, like the moon, rides 
 serenely. 
 
 It might almost be questioned whether 
 one has heard Heine, without Franz ! " Mor- 
 gen steh' ich auf und frage kommt feins 
 Llebchen heut' ? " expresses the dull suc- 
 cession of wakeful nights and dreamy days 
 when the loved one is absent, not at all in 
 the grand manner, but in the plaintive fashion 
 of childhood or youth. So the accompani- . 
 ment begins monotonously, and repeats two 
 beats later on, canon fashion, the same notes 
 that the air has just left, as if everything in 
 the world were happening over and over in 
 an unbearable little cycle. In " Lieb Lieb- 
 chen leg's Handchen auf 's Herze Mein " . 
 the subdued thumping of the carpenter 
 pounding at his heart is as obvious in the 
 128 
 
MUSIC 
 
 accompaniment as it is explicitly stated in 
 the poem, and with so light a touch that 
 one can forget it if he will, just as one may- 
 cease to notice his own heart-beats. 
 
 Perhaps no song is a more masterly in- 
 terpretation of Heine, however, than " Das 
 ist ein Floten und Geigen ** in its Schumann 
 setting. Here the disappointed lover stands 
 alone outside the door, while the violins and 
 flutes and trumpets are celebrating within 
 the marriage of his beloved to his rival. The 
 boisterous orchestra inside is blaring out its 
 own dance rhythm, while the lonely poet, 
 out of tune with it all, is lost in his own 
 regrets. The accompaniment introduces the 
 wedding music, which is peculiarly haunting, 
 but almost metallic in its fixed rhythm. It 
 plays on uninterruptedly throughout the 
 song, but the melody suddenly breaks in 
 upon it on a dissonant note, and with an air 
 as out of sympathy with the accompaniment 
 129 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 as the poet is at odds with the revelers within. 
 Never does the melody begin without mak- 
 ing a dissonance with the accompaniment, 
 and when the voice suddenly stops, the wed- 
 ding music goes on at its own mad rhythm 
 for twenty measures, absolutely regardless 
 of the singer; and then dies down in a set of 
 chromatics most subtly suggestive of the re- 
 cession of pitch of a distant orchestra in the 
 ears of a departing guest. The dramatic por- 
 trayal of a mental crisis through the sounds 
 that accompany it has reached a maximum 
 of perfection in such a song as this. 
 
 In such examples of songaccompaniments, 
 we have as intelligible an idea of action trans- 
 mitted by the music as by the words of the 
 song, and to one accustomed to listen, one 
 form of expression is as articulate as the 
 other. Modern operatic music, following 
 Wagner's lead, is one long illustration of 
 the same thing. In Wagner's own words, 
 130 
 
MUSIC 
 
 where he asserts the interdependence of 
 music and poetry in the drama, " Only that 
 art-variety which wills the common art-work 
 reaches the highest fill of its own particular 
 nature." 
 
 But any aesthetics of music must explain 
 the appeal of sounds unaccompanied by 
 words, and hence dependent entirely upon 
 themselves for rational content. Here is its 
 real problem. Can we say that a sonata rep- 
 resents any natural sounds modified into 
 tone, as the opening music of " Siegfried '* 
 represents hammering on an anvil? It must 
 be admitted that since most instrumental 
 music, and even the greater number of songs, 
 make no pretense whatever to convey an 
 actual representation of sounds in nature, 
 such an aim may be present or absent and 
 the essential character of music remain the 
 same. Music will still be music, irrespective 
 of its portraiture of other sound events. In- 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 strumental music may definitely represent 
 natural sounds even without words, as the 
 prelude to the " Rheingold " represents the 
 sounds of a flowing river ; as the final music 
 of the "Walkiire" portrays flickering fire ; or 
 as the Tschaikovsky overture to " Paolo 
 and Francesca" hurls its victims on the ma- 
 jestic but terrible surging of the winds of 
 hell. But even here the imagery is suggested 
 by the title. We are given our cue; and 
 however much music without words or title 
 might be able to represent the sounds of na- 
 ture, it is certain that a relatively small pro- 
 portion of it does, and that our satisfaction 
 in it and our judgment of its excellence ap- 
 pear to be quite independent of such at- 
 tempts. This province of descriptive music, 
 legitimate as it undoubtedly is, is but one 
 field which may be more or less entered in 
 some types of composition, or even at dif- 
 ferent times in the same composition, and 
 132 
 
MUSIC 
 
 then suddenly left, with no shock to the ra- 
 tionality of the musical idea. What, then, 
 is the rationality of instrumental music, with 
 no accurate portrayal of the sounds of na- 
 ture, and with no indication whatever in its 
 title, as to the meaning which the composer 
 has in his mind ? 
 
 As has been observed by many writers,^ 
 music is the most abstract of all the arts. 
 Whereas painting, sculpture, and poetry pre- 
 sent a figure, a group, or an action, and al- 
 low those to arouse the emotional response 
 appropriate to them, music presents a rhyth- 
 mic sound sequence which arouses at once 
 in us a motor response which is emotion as 
 such; an emotion without any definite ob- 
 ject. Thus a story may present a situation 
 which will cause the reader to hold his breath 
 and to project his agitation into the charac- 
 ters. This agitation is made up, physiologi- 
 cally, of quick breathing, parted lips, and a 
 133 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 thumping heart. These impressions the 
 reader attaches to the action of which he 
 reads. But let music be played with opposed 
 rhythms, to both of which the listener is un- 
 able to respond at the same time, and the 
 difficult adjustment to the tones brings about 
 in him the same agitated response, but with 
 this difference : there is no literary object; it 
 is the quintessence of emotion, with no ob- 
 ject at all. I may see the painting of shep- 
 herds dancing, or read of dancing shepherds; 
 but the simple musical rustic dance repre- 
 \ sents the dance as an abstract activity. Shep- 
 herds may or may not be dancing ; fairies 
 may or may not be dancing. The dancers 
 may be anything you like, so long as they 
 would dance in such a fashion. More likely 
 to the trained listener it is simply certain 
 notes in a given key which dance. That is 
 enough for him. He has in music relin- 
 quished his interest in the reactions to spe- 
 134 
 
MUSIC 
 
 clfic activities of visible objects, and he seeks 
 instead the spirit of movement itself, as it is 
 the same for all objects of a given class. 
 
 It is interesting in this connection to re- 
 member that there are no minor arts in 
 literature and music as there are in visual 
 forms. Through the ear there seems to be 
 no possibility of communicating that par- 
 ticular kind of idea which the minor arts 
 express. There may be in music or poetry 
 as much humor and lively activity as one 
 wills, but the presence of such interests or 
 their expression has no analogue to the in- 
 dustrial arts which express these interests 
 and these alone. No matter how rhymed 
 or how rhythmed or how keyed ; the song, 
 the symphony, the sonnet, and the epic are 
 equally major arts, and fall into no classifi- 
 cation which broadly distinguishes the more 
 from the less serious. The reason for this 
 lies in the peculiar relation between the crea- 
 135 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 tor and the reproducer of the auditory arts, 
 a relation that does not exist in the arts which 
 appeal to vision alone. There is an especial 
 weakness and a corresponding strength in the 
 auditory arts which give them their extraordi- 
 narily vital character. The arts of literature 
 and especially of music must be re-created 
 every time they are experienced. But once 
 the visual art object leaves the artist's hand, 
 it is complete and finished. It has said what 
 it has to say, and while its message will vary 
 according to its audience (the understanding 
 critic will get much, and the dull man little), 
 no one steps between the artist and the ap- 
 preciator. Nothing can separate them but 
 their own temperaments. On the other hand, 
 literature and music can, and generally must, 
 go through an interpreter before they exist at 
 all. Sometimes the interpreter and the audi- 
 ence are one, sometimes they are different 
 people. But, strictly speaking, a song only ex- 
 136 
 
MUSIC 
 
 ists as being sung, or a drama as being acted. 
 A poem or a story may be read silently, to 
 be sure, as may music, but because they 
 admit of being re-created by an interpreter, 
 with a different order of talent from the 
 original artist, they may become new crea- 
 tions every time they are expressed. Because 
 they may be such different things according 
 to the voice or instrument of the interpre- 
 tative artist, there arises a peculiar harmony 
 between the re-creator and the audience 
 which is not possible with the visual arts. 
 Sometimes, as we said before, this may be 
 a disadvantage. Granted yourself normal, 
 and the Elgin marbles in a good light, and 
 you have all there is. Nothing but violence 
 can spoil the experience. But plays and 
 poems, symphonies and operas, may be so 
 disguised by poor interpretation, or so glori- 
 fied by skillful interpretation, that sometimes 
 you are getting one thing and sometimes 
 137 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 another. Often a variety of methods of trans- 
 mission are possible, and they may seem 
 equally good according to the mood. But 
 here lies the very core of the situation. The 
 
 ' auditory arts can vary their meaning so as to 
 be exactly harmonious to performer or audi- 
 ence, and because they can, because they 
 never refuse to respond to any human emo- 
 tion, they are all fine arts. Every one is as 
 large as man who is the standard. 
 
 / If we begin with the classical forms of 
 music, the simple melody, and the conven- 
 tional harmonies of the canon and fugue, 
 and the question is raised, " Why do you 
 like them?" we can only answer: "We like 
 them because the ear likes to be stimulated 
 by different pitches, and because the recur- 
 rence of the same theme is in itself pleasing, 
 just as any recurrence is pleasurable." Repe- 
 tition as repetition is agreeable in sound as 
 in the decorative arts, and in the classified 
 
 138 
 
MUSIC 
 
 musical forms, even when they become most 
 complicated, there is a charm' and a blithe- 
 ness which any regularly repeated action 
 always produces. Suppose one fancies a boy / 
 running along the road — it is an insignifi- 
 cant matter enough. If another boy follows 
 behind, imitating every action, it is amus- 
 ing; and if a row of small boys follow each 
 other in such a uniformity, it is a game 1 
 Why is it? Because when two springs of 
 action voluntarily imitate each other, it be- 
 tokens an amiable agreement and a humor- 
 ous acceptance of the rules imposed upon 
 themselves. 
 
 Exactly this emotion, produced by the 
 abstract presentation of imitated sequences, 
 we have in the early classical forms, and 
 there is always the serenity of a game in 
 which all parties agree to conform to the 
 rules. It is not necessary to have a title, or 
 to have words suggesting who and what 
 139 
 
d 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 characters are involved in this changeful 
 exercise. Any visual imagery which may be 
 added, however charming, is as unnecessary 
 a prop as would be a musical accompani- 
 ment to sculpture. If we enjoy any scene in 
 life where particular people hurry and lag, 
 disappear and reappear, meet, separate, rise 
 and fall ; so in music we enjoy the pure 
 sound presentation of hurry and drag, meet- 
 ing, separation, rise and disappearance, for the 
 sound is in itself agreeable, and the motor 
 response to all this ordered activity is the 
 response to all well-regulated rhythms. It is 
 only those ill-advised listeners who are ob- 
 stinate visualists, who will insist that it is 
 moonlight which comes and goes, or death 
 which knocks at the door. It is not moonlight 
 which comes and goes, but a certain theme 
 as quieting as moonlight. It is not death's 
 knock at the door, but the tone G which 
 knocks at the violins, and in such a fashion 
 140 
 
MUSIC 
 
 that we feel as we should feel if death were 
 knocking. It is only when we are so admit- 
 tedly of one type of imagery that a moon 
 means something, and a note mc^ns nothing, 
 that we shall find music unintelligible with- 
 out a visual interpretation. 
 
 The change from classical to romantic 
 music has the most direct connection possi- 
 ble with our emotional organism. The ami- 
 able character of two or more voices in the 
 same rhythm and following each other in 
 the same play of melodic sequence changes 
 to a troubled strain of adjustment when the 
 voices decline to sing the same tune or to 
 follow the same rhythm. 
 
 A large part of the invention in romantic 
 music has been in complicated rhythms, 
 which keep together only enough to form 
 one organism, but which pull apart in 
 such a fashion that the motor response of 
 the listener, and thereby his emotions, are 
 141 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 bound to be more or less distracted. The 
 essential element of all romanticism is indi- 
 vidualism, and we have passed from a sim- 
 ple kindly world, where melodies agree to 
 play together, into a tenser atmosphere where 
 each voice is more conscious of its own in- 
 dividuality than of the life of the whole. 
 The romantic composer confines himself 
 V, to no sound world of amiable agreements. 
 An obvious example of this strain of parts 
 is in the Chopin A minor etude. A sombre 
 resolute theme is introduced in the bass and 
 a chromatic air in the treble, which increases 
 in individuality till the two parts are sing- 
 ing opposing airs, of equal importance, at 
 the same time. You may ignore one or the 
 other, or you may strive to combine them ; 
 but the unrest occasioned by such a strug- 
 gle of warring factions, equally lovely and 
 equally obstinate, brings about an emotion 
 of passionate combat with no nameable 
 142 
 
MUSIC 
 
 combatants but the two halves of the 
 piano ! 
 
 In a drama the hero may struggle with 
 his enemy ; in an athletic contest wrestlers 
 struggle with each other; in romantic music 
 we have the struggle of opposing individual- 
 ities reduced to the last degree of abstract- 
 ness. We live the tug and strain of opposing 
 sound and rhythms, and we feel that we have 
 put our finger on the pulse of combat as 
 such, without the distraction of any indi- 
 vidual figures to deprive our insight of its 
 ideal essence. The tension is greater when 
 not only melodies but rhythms are in op- 
 position, or especially when we are forced to 
 a rhythm which is strange to us. We try to 
 count it, to breathe it, as for instance in the 
 five-beat scherzo of Tschaikovsky's Pathetic 
 Symphony. We cannot accept a five-beat 
 rhythm readily. We expect three or four 
 beats, and we get five. The constant defeat of 
 143 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 expectation gives the tantalizingly haunting 
 character to that exquisite movement. The 
 opposed rhythms in Brahms are a study in 
 themselves, and there are wonderfully effec- 
 tive rhythm inventions in Schumann. The 
 second movement of his third string quar- 
 tette begins in a three-beat agitato move- 
 ment, agitato because the first two beats of 
 the measure are always suppressed. One 
 expects a note to start the measure ; every 
 measure a rest takes the place of the expected 
 beat, and the result is a constantly defeated 
 expectation, which is in itself the emotional 
 expression of agitation. Later on the same 
 melody appears again, but absolutely changed 
 in character. The rhythm has shifted so that 
 the accent comes where it is expected, on the 
 first beat, and all is calm again! 
 
 All the variations in modern music of 
 dissonances and opposed rhythms illustrate 
 over and over again the psychology of emo- 
 144 
 
MUSIC 
 
 tlon. Sound sequences arouse motor re- 
 sponse, motor response constitutes emotion. 
 Let the response be simple and unified, and 
 the pitch sequences not too unexpected, and 
 the emotion is calm and cheerful, humorous 
 or spirited, as the case may be. Let the 
 rhythm be opposed to itself, and the pitch 
 sequence after being of one type change to 
 a different one, and the listener reflects the 
 same character of unrest. His defeated ex- 
 pectation in sound becomes a type of the 
 pure emotion of defeat. 
 
 In Franz's "Im Herbst" one has been 
 singing F, and expects F again. Instead, 
 " Mein Lieb ist falsch" suddenly strikes a 
 despairing Gb, half a tone higher, and the 
 " falsity " of the G b is the musical fact, 
 falsity in its very essense. That the falsity 
 in this case attaches itself to " Mein Lieb " 
 is an incident of the poetry, not of the 
 music. 
 
 145 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 / One might conclude that, since so much 
 depends upon the motor response in musi- 
 cal appreciation, the more motion in the 
 listener the better ! That this is a not un- 
 usual conclusion is evidenced by the fact 
 that an unwonted listener so often moves 
 his head to marked rhythms ; sighing to 
 dance to the waltz and to step off to the 
 march. In default of this opportunity he 
 beats time with his feet upon the floor. That 
 this is an error is patent from the slightest 
 knowledge of the psychology of emotion. 
 Motor response arouses emotion, but, para- 
 doxically enough, in so far as this response 
 becomes extra-organic it dissipates the very 
 emotion to which it has given rise. To keep 
 the humor of a joke ever fresh, suppress 
 your laughter, and let it simmer below the 
 point of expression. To preserve a grief, 
 do not enjoy the luxury of tears, Goethe's 
 " Wonne der Wehmuth " — for, as he says, 
 146 
 
MUSIC 
 
 it is not to the drenched but to the half- 
 dried eye that the partly suppressed emo- 
 tion retains its bitterness. So in the appre- 
 ciation of music. To dance, to march, to 
 beat time and sway the body relieves the 
 emotion which has been excited. But if the 
 tendencies are suppressed within the organ- 
 ism, and are lived out inwardly, but not al- 
 lowed to dissipate themselves in overt ac- 
 tion, then the emotional value of the world 
 of sounds is at its height, and we live out 
 within ourselves the idealized drama of 
 human action in a sightless universe. ' 
 
 Music will seem inarticulate and irrational "^ 
 only to those who have the settled convic- 
 tion that the world of sight and touch, and 
 not the world of sound, is the real world. /• 
 That all of us are inclined to assign an extra 
 reality to things seen is proved by the fact 
 that we accept the verdict of vision above 
 hearing in ordinary matters. If the bird's 
 H7 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 song sounds as if it came from a different 
 branch from the one where we see the bird, 
 we accept the sight localization as corrective 
 of the sound. Our descriptions are of the 
 sights of the world more often than of its 
 ^ sounds. We are short-lived at best ; we strug- 
 gle for a footing in a world that continually 
 slips from us, and we search always for the 
 visible and unchanging, thereby depending 
 upon vision and upon visual imagery. So an 
 art message that defies a visual interpreta- 
 tion impresses us at first sight as without ra- 
 tional content. But once we have accustomed 
 ourselves to a world of time and sound where 
 space has lost its meaning, we can admit the 
 rationality of an art which mirrors the dy- 
 namic changes in nature by sound, as paint- 
 ing gives position in space by color. We 
 feel the essential vitality of an art, which dis- 
 carding all other tools presents to us at first 
 hand the very kernel of the movement of 
 148 
 
MUSIC 
 
 life, where only sounds and our own abstract 
 emotions are the ghostly characters. Our ^^ 
 world of experience presents a chaos, from 
 which our reason is ever attempting to evolve 
 a cosmos. The visual arts represent the static 
 qualities of things. They translate the artist's 
 transformation of the hurry of the world into 
 one ageless instant, and we rest with them 
 in a cleft in the rock while the world of move-/ 
 ment sweeps by. 
 
 Far otherwise with music. Here the trans- 
 lation is of a different order. We see the re- 
 verse of the shield. Behind the seeming quiet 
 of things is detected an incessant surge of 
 life. The moment which seemed a fixed point 
 according to one philosophy, by another is 
 perceived as a dynamic sequence. Whereas 
 the sculptor and the painter immortalize the 
 static qualities of things, the musician gives 
 not the active succession of events, which 
 the writer interprets, but he forces from you 
 . 149 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the dynamic reaction which is identical with 
 that moment. You do not so much reflect 
 it as you live it. Your emotional organism 
 is touched at its very core by rhythmical 
 sound sequences, for you feel that out of the 
 chaos of natural forces has been evolved the 
 very law of ordered motion. 
 / The visual arts are dedicated to Parmen- 
 ides. They represent a world with no move- 
 ment, but eternal calm. But music is the 
 child of Heracleitus. Rest is impossible. A 
 thing is what it is only by constant change 
 \ to what it is not. Behind the visible objects 
 which development has made possible are 
 the tides of development itself, which no man 
 may see, but which he may hear, whether in 
 the thunder or in the still small voice. 
 
 Any heroic figure of sculpture, painting, 
 
 or literature has become fixed in our memory 
 
 or imagination because of the truth of his 
 
 nature, which each art according to its nature 
 
 150 
 
MUSIC 
 
 has fastened upon and reflected in its own 
 medium. Thus the naked youthfulness, the 
 impetuous irresponsibility of Siegfried as a 
 living form is the sculptor*s province. Sieg- 
 fried in his setting of the green forest, or 
 played upon by the light of the forge, or in 
 a hundred other possible atmospheres, is the 
 painter's model. His growth, his longings 
 for companionship, his combats and defeats, 
 his falseness and his sombre end, are all 
 themes for the poet, or for the poet and the 
 musician combined. But when we enter the 
 limits of pure instrumental music, Siegfried 
 as an individual or as a visible type has faded 
 away. We feel no more the struggle and the 
 disappointments as belonging to Siegfried. 
 Experience is linked no longer to an indi- 
 vidual destiny. But sound and rhythm give 
 the pure rise and fall, the hope and the de- 
 feat of life ; the loneliness of a single voice 
 meeting another which sings persistently an- 
 151 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 other song, the dissatisfaction of airs which 
 will not march together, or the exquisite com- 
 bination of differing but harmonious voices, 
 which unite in a duet or chorus. If Hamlet 
 was uncertain, in music we have uncertainty, 
 and have forgotten Hamlet. If Werther had 
 unsatisfied longings, or if Columbine was a 
 coquette, Werther and Columbine are for 
 other arts, but longing and coquetry are for 
 music. In the most limpidly pure of all in- 
 strumental music, the string quartette, it is 
 as if the artist, like the traditional philoso- 
 pher, had put out his eyes the better to dis- 
 cern the reality of these invisible forces of 
 the universe, and had betaken himself to an 
 art where the last possible concreteness of 
 material medium had been purged away, and 
 where one could only listen for that which 
 is too hidden for light ever to reveal. 
 
V 
 
 ART AND NATURE 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 In our analysis of various arts, we have set 
 forth our reasons for thinking that in the 
 fine arts the representation of certain natural 
 phenomena in certain specific materials ex- 
 hibits the essence of their nature with a 
 peculiar fitness. 
 
 We have discovered that, given a par- 
 ticular aspect of the world, there is a partic- 
 ular appropriateness in expressing that point 
 of view in one substance rather than another ; 
 and the result, if successful, is called a work^ 
 of art. 
 
 We find everywhere, in all stages of hu-^ 
 
 man development, this same tendency to 
 
 translate the world of experience into the 
 
 world of art, and to crystallize into perma- 
 
 155 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 nent form the fleeting aspects of a varying 
 world. Widespread as is this activity, it has 
 not, however, remained unchallenged. There 
 have not lacked critics in every generation 
 who look upon art with feelings either of 
 bewilderment or of absolute disapproval. 
 
 The attitude of the first type might be 
 expressed in words like these: "Why all 
 this to-do about art? What is it for? How 
 can it be justifiable, in a busy practical 
 world, to spend time and money upon a 
 statue, a fresco, a decorated fa9ade, when 
 there is not bread enough to go around, and 
 when so many men have not comfortable 
 houses, to say nothing of artistic ones ? " 
 Such critics look upon a picture gallery as 
 incomprehensible ; a concert as merely an 
 amusement for a relaxed hour; and a poet, 
 painter, or any of the artistic brotherhood 
 as anomalies which cannot be explained in 
 any reasonable philosophy. " We enjoy a 
 
 156 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 fine day in the country/* they say, "but 
 why paint it ? We enjoy making love, but 
 why read about it ? For what conceivable 
 reason should we care to gaze at nude crea- 
 tures in stone ? And why bother to put 
 decorations upon a building which is made 
 to live in and not to look at ? " Such an atti- 
 tude, frankly expressed, Philistine though 
 it may be, cannot be too lightly dismissed. 
 It is an honest, and in a certain sense the 
 most obvious, reaction of a practical mind 
 to an unpractical activity. 
 
 The second type of objector is more posi- 
 tive in his attack. He does not question, 
 but he denounces. Plato, who found it im- 
 possible to justify the painter and the poet, 
 is the classic type of this kind of critic. 
 There is, he says, one perfect bed in the 
 world of ideas; the carpenter makes an im- 
 perfect copy of it in the material beds which 
 he constructs ; and the painter makes a copy 
 157 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 of a copy in his picture of it. He is, there- 
 fore, three removes from reality. He is an 
 imitator of imperfection, and, as such, he 
 has no place in an ideal republic. The poet's 
 work is also an imitation of imperfection, 
 and as such is without excuse. So Plato, 
 artist that he was, dismisses art like a re- 
 luctant lover, and fearing for the safety of 
 his city warns his disciples to be on their 
 guard against its seductions. Plato and his 
 followers are not insensitive, as is the first 
 type of objector. But just because they feel 
 the charm of art so keenly, they argue that 
 so powerful an attraction is dangerous if it 
 cannot be rationally accounted for. Finding 
 no adequate excuse for it in their philosophy, 
 they wistfully but conscientiously turn their 
 backs upon it. 
 
 Into these two classes, the Philistines and 
 the Platonists, widely interpreted, can be 
 put all of the opponents of the theory that 
 158 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 art has in itself a mission and a message 
 that no other activity in life can adequately 
 transmit. According to their temperament 
 these opponents of art would base their hopes 
 for an ideal state on religion, philosophy, 
 education, industry, socialism, pure food, 
 ventilation, baths, or what-not; but art would 
 be dismissed by them as non-essential, mean- 
 ingless, or positively vicious, as the case 
 might be. 
 
 It is certain that no defender of art would 
 be so rash as to assert that it alone can per- 
 form all the functions for which the activities 
 mentioned above were created. He would 
 not insist upon substitution or comparison, 
 but he would ask merely for recognition. 
 Surely no one trained in artistic apprecia- 
 tion would so soon forget a lesson which is 
 there continually forced upon him. This 
 lesson is that every art has its own field, 
 strictly limited by the laws of the substance 
 159 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 which it has itself chosen, and that it does 
 not gain but rather loses in any attempt to 
 enlarge its boundaries by invading the ter- 
 ritory of another art. So art, as a whole, 
 would never attempt to supplant religion, 
 education, or pure food. All these worthy 
 objects are as little to be compared as are a 
 sonnet and a silver cup. But while one does 
 not plead the substitution of art for other 
 activities, it is necessary to analyze the 
 grounds on which the unfavorable estimates 
 of art are made, or still more upon which it 
 is ignored; and to mark out, if possible, 
 that field wherein art alone can function, if 
 anything is to function at all. 
 i There is perhaps one assumption common 
 to all opponents of art. They agree in find- 
 ing a wide difference between the natural 
 object which is the model and the art object 
 which represents it. Just as Plato insisted 
 that the actual bed or the practical action 
 i6o 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 was necessary, but that the painting of the 
 bed and the poem about the action were 
 unnecessary and hence unjustifiable, so they 
 would all emphasize the wide chasm between 
 the living thing and the lifeless copy. The 
 more impassioned defenders of nature against 
 art express themselves somewhat in this 
 fashion : " Give us life and not the cold 
 image of life. Let us see the sunrise and 
 the waterfall, and hear the birds sing, and 
 be the actors in our own drama, and live 
 under the dome of the sky. Of what con- 
 sequence is a stone youth and a painted 
 ocean compared with life ? Any mother with 
 her child is worth more than a Madonna in 
 an altar piece ; and what is a cathedral nave 
 when one may be under arching trees in the 
 primeval forests ? " It may be said at once 
 that this enthusiasm for natural beauty is 
 felt by none more keenly than by the artists 
 themselves. The whole field of aesthetics 
 i6i 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 extends over "fine nature" as well as the 
 fine arts, and without a sensitiveness to the 
 appeal of one, the other would not exist. 
 It is not, then, an opposition between those 
 who delight in nature and those who de- 
 light in art; but between those who love 
 but one and those who love both! It may 
 even be asserted that the artist does not 
 love nature less because he has room for 
 two affections, but that he is far more de- 
 voted to natural beauty than any one can 
 be who draws the line too sharply between 
 \^\ one province and the other. Our endeavor 
 has been hitherto, throughout our aesthetic 
 enquiry, to make the distinction more clear 
 between diflFerent classes of objects. Here, 
 on the contrary, we are forced to challenge 
 a distinction between nature and art, which 
 lightly made cannot be so easily defended. 
 Does not the excessive valuation of na- 
 ture as opposed to art illustrate anew the 
 162 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 sentimental attitude toward life which Schiller 
 distinguished from the simple? Is it not the 
 sentimentalist, who is not natural himself, 
 and whose art interests have been merely 
 conventional, who defends himself by such 
 a distinction between art and nature, and who 
 turns to natural phenomena as the only free 
 escape from a world of affectation ? We can 
 fancy the indoors man, who at long intervals 
 has politely attended a concert or an exhi- 
 bition of pictures which he does not under- 
 stand, as fleeing to the open field with a 
 breath of relief, and exclaiming, " How can 
 art compare with green trees and the sound 
 of a running brook ? " Does this mean, how- 
 ever, that art and nature are so far apart, or 
 simply that his art was not natural for him ? 
 If an art-weary man sallied forth with a 
 group of strangers to "enjoy nature," would 
 not his reaction be as dreary as it is now to 
 his third cathedral in one afternoon ? And, 
 163 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 on the other hand, if art could become to 
 him as it now is to an artist or an art-lover, 
 as one of the most natural expressions of 
 life, what meaning is there left in this an- 
 tithesis ? 
 
 It surely does not occur to a child, as it 
 turns from its own play to stories and pic- 
 tures of children playing, that it has passed 
 from nature to literature and the visual arts. 
 It does not occur to a natural man out walk- 
 ing on a spring morning that his impulsive 
 singing of " Hark, Hark, the Lark ! " is art 
 as opposed to nature all about him. He 
 sings as the birds do because it is part of 
 life, and if his flute were with him he would 
 play upon it in as unconscious a manner. 
 In the same fashion he would play on his 
 piano in his own house, without a suspicion 
 that formality had taken the place of spon- 
 taneous nature. 
 
 Where does art begin ? If a bird is nature, 
 164 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 is not a boy nature ? If the bird sings, can- 
 not the boy? And may not a chorus of 
 boys play and sing upon their pipes, their 
 violins, or their trumpets and make an or- 
 chestra, which only differs from nature in 
 that it has added a constructive human 
 nature ? So long as this human nature is ^ 
 natural and not conventional, no break oc- 
 curs from the simplest natural sound or sight 
 to the most complex, and the antithesis is not 
 between nature and art, but between nature 
 and unnatural art. If a man tells a graphic ' 
 story to his friend, is it nature or is it art ? 
 The simple Greek poets were not afraid to 
 sing, not of natural scenery, but of the deeds 
 of men in action. So children act dramas of 
 school and of church, of weddings, baptisms, 
 the kitchen, and the shop. They are them- 
 selves natural, so the world of action is to 
 them absorbing. The sentimentalist in art 
 cannot see the poetry of the kitchen and the 
 165 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 shop, but he flies to the waterfall and the 
 nightingale as the only pure realm of fancy 
 untainted by a denaturalized human nature. 
 May we not, then, conclude, that, legiti- 
 mate as the most ardent love of natural 
 scenery undoubtedly is, the man who insists 
 upon his love for nature as distinct from 
 art has thereby passed a comment upon him- 
 self and upon his society ? Has he not said, 
 " My art has not been natural, but forced. 
 Now I dare to be honest. Give me the pure 
 sights and sounds of nature, which charm 
 without disturbing" ? Or it may be that the 
 rebel against art is not insensitive to it, but 
 that he feels that he has loved it too exclu- 
 sively. After a period of retirement from the 
 world, and of living only the vicarious life 
 of the heroes of art, he suddenly asks, " Why 
 have I not lived myself?" — and, like 
 Faust, he turns his back on what now seems 
 the formality of art, and throws himself in- 
 i66 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 stead into what he calls the reality of natu- 
 ral life. In both cases the situation is the 
 same. Men who have ceased to be wholly- 
 natural sigh in a homesick fashion for the 
 nature they have lost ; and the first activity 
 of their former conventional life against 
 which they are likely to fulminate is the art 
 activity. It is obvious enough why this 
 should be so. Art, being as it is a supremely 
 natural activity, feeding continually upon the 
 fullness of life, is one of the first to sicken 
 and die when a man or a society becomes 
 formal or under-vitalized. Conventional en- 
 counters do not afford material for either 
 dramas or poetry. A conventional morality 
 may found a good hospital, but it cannot 
 write a good hymn. It shows in some de- 
 gree the good sense of such nature-lovers 
 when they refuse to be moved by the art of 
 an artificial society, which in all likelihood 
 is neither art nor nature. 
 167 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 / We may grant, then, the honesty of the 
 plaintive cry, "We are not natural, so give 
 us nature " ; but we still protest that the " na- 
 ture" which such men pine to experience 
 (unless they are confounding nature simply 
 with the health and physical energy of an 
 outdoor life) is no more natural phenomena, 
 untouched by art, than it is a vigorous natu- 
 ^1 art. It is not the mother singing to her 
 baby, who feels that the song is art as op- 
 posed to nature. It is as natural for her to 
 sing to it as it is to love it. If she has not 
 the art of song, she longs for it to fulfill her 
 nature. Moreover, the finer the lullaby, and 
 the better she sings, the better she likes it. 
 Beethoven, Brahms, or Strauss would not 
 frighten her. The most exquisite lullaby 
 ever created would not be too much art, 
 for she and the baby have enough of their 
 own nature to understand. It is more likely 
 to be the childless woman who sighs over 
 i68 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 the artificiality of lullabies, and. who betakes 
 herself to the " nature " of a babies' hospi- 
 tal. It is not a patriot in a day of national 
 rejoicing who finds the hymn, the chorus, 
 the orchestra, the unveiled monument, the 
 commemoration ode, too art-full. The most 
 magnificent ode or architecture would not 
 be too much art, but too little to express the 
 fullness of his nature. It is not the religious 
 enthusiast who, sickening of the music and 
 poetry of real religious feeling, turns to the 
 religion of the meadow, and protests that 
 the sermons in the stones are enough for 
 him. For him the world of art has used 
 every natural power of expression to repre- 
 sent, what after all nature both in and out of 
 art is inadequate to express. He would be 
 no more afraid that such a display would 
 turn him from the true nature of religion 
 than would a lover be alarmed lest his sere- 
 nade, if well sung, should make him forget 
 169 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the lady whom he was serenading. He is so 
 sure of his nature that the very best of his 
 art is none too good. It is rather he who 
 has missed the exalted moments of life, but 
 who has automatically gone through the 
 forms of art, which can only validly be in- 
 spired by them, who suddenly wakes up to 
 what he has lacked, and who oddly enough 
 makes innocent art and not his own starved 
 nature the scapegoat ! Suppose, however, 
 that one of our critics admits all that 
 we have said. Suppose he says, " I grant 
 you that some emotional souls find gratifi- 
 cation in this art expression which is their 
 nature — but after all it is not mine. Such 
 emotional discharge is not a feature in my 
 own life. It becomes less and less so year by 
 year. Moreover, an adequate art expression 
 is not an easy matter. Art is a laborious 
 exercise and only to be attained through a 
 long apprenticeship. If some men must have 
 170 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 art, let them have it. But is there any rea- 
 son why we, who can get along without it, 
 should add this burden to a life already 
 overtaxed ? " 
 
 This is a justifiable question, and it 
 changes entirely the direction of our de- 
 fense. We need no longer protest that art 
 and nature for artistically sensitive human 
 beings are but two aspects of the same real- 
 ity, for this has been admitted. We are sim- 
 ply called to defend this particular kind of 
 nature called art when a man says that it is 
 non-essential to life. Shall we allow him to 
 dismiss art from his universe if he chooses, 
 provided he stops trying to dismiss it from 
 ours? 
 
 We can maintain, I believe with truth, N 
 that art, far from being a mere matter of 
 taste, a relaxation for those who like it, and 
 inconsequential for those who do not, plays 
 so large a part in the life of a rational world 
 171 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 that it is not only inadvisable but impossi- 
 ble to escape it. 
 
 We can assert boldly that aesthetic laws 
 are no more to be ignored with impunity 
 than are laws of morals and reason ; and 
 that to say, " I will live insensitive to that 
 high expression of man's nature, his art," is 
 equivalent to saying, " I will refuse to admit 
 that two negatives make an affirmative, or 
 \ that righteousness exalteth a nation." 
 
 If we analyze natural beauty as we have 
 analyzed the different arts, employing the 
 same method in our questions, we should 
 ask first, as we have always done, " Of what 
 substance is this and that natural object com- 
 posed, and what idea, if any, does it con- 
 vey ? " We have tested certain arts by this 
 method of harmonizing the material with 
 the idea which it embodied, and it seems 
 valid to do the same with nature, which is 
 art's model. 
 
 172 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 In nature, untouched by art, we un- 
 doubtedly enjoy certain objects in the same 
 manner that we enjoy an art. Both its sub- 
 stances and our attitude are the same. Thus 
 the natural bridges, arches, and monoliths 
 of rocky scenery have a strictly architectural 
 appeal. The rocky substance of which they 
 are composed is an architectural material 
 as in art, and their forms are architectural 
 forms. Far from detracting from the beauty 
 of wild nature, such phenomenal walls, caves, 
 or pinnacles of rock give a special fascina- 
 tion to it, not because it is more natural, but 
 because, to a certain extent, nature has suc- 
 ceeded in being architectural ! 
 ' So the natural encounters of human be- 
 ings in contact with each other are judged, 
 if we watch them from without, by a drama- 
 tic standard. We watch the bargaining of a 
 shrewd peddler with a shrewder house- 
 keeper, the antics of the man of all work in 
 173 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 his endeavor to charm the housemaid, the 
 games of children embodying their version 
 of the activities of their elders, or the group 
 of farmers swapping stories around a coun- 
 try store, with the same delight in human 
 character revealing itself that we do in a good 
 comedy. The material of words and sen- 
 tences, scenery and costumes, is the same 
 that it is in dramatic art ; and if the house- 
 keeper, the housemaid, and the farmers are 
 only sufficiently sharp, coy, or consistently 
 amusing, we call the scene up to the level 
 of real comedy. Otherwise, it is only nature ! 
 The human voice and natural objects pro- 
 vide the tones that are the material for art 
 as well as for nature, and who can say when 
 one changes to the other ? Of sculpture and 
 painting, however, the same cannot be said. 
 The natural material of human forms is flesh, 
 and not the stone and metal of sculpture. 
 The material of the world of natural scenery 
 174 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 is earth, air, fire, water, fish, flesh, fowl, and 
 who knows what else besides? Certainly 
 their substance is not paint. 
 r If, then, we are contemplating the human 
 form because it is real flesh ; and if we con- 
 template either natural forms or scenery, 
 because they are composed of real fire, air, 
 and water, then our enjoyment is undoubt- 
 edly of nature, and not of art. If we insist 
 that the flesh shall feel like flesh as well as 
 look like it; that the water must be liquid 
 and the fire burn, the flowers have perfume 
 and the banquets taste, then it is true that 
 our satisfaction could not be as well achieved 
 by sculpture or painting. Here the critic is 
 right ; and it is just here that the lover of 
 " nature " undoubtedly has his feet upon the 
 solid ground of fact. He cannot bathe in 
 the painted brook, or lie under the etched 
 tree, or derive any pleasure from holding 
 the sculptured baby. He is simply confess- 
 175 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 ing that the eye alone cannot give him na- 
 ture. He insists upon the exercise of all his 
 senses at once ; and arts which limit them- 
 selves strictly to one sense, and to a mate- 
 rial other than that in which the forms 
 naturally live, cannot give him what he 
 demands from the reality. This is a valid 
 position. All our senses have a right to exer- 
 cise, and any healthy human being will de- 
 sire their full activity. But has not the eye 
 at least as much a right to be exercised as 
 the other senses ? And when all the senses 
 are active at once, is the eye really seeing 
 all that it may ? When you bathe in the 
 brook, do you really see it ? When you doze 
 under a tree in warm and fragrant hay, do 
 you really see all the lines and colors of the 
 tree and hay ? When you watch athletes run- 
 ning, are you not too interested in the result 
 of the race to see their nude muscles as hu- 
 man forms ? In so far as you grant the right 
 176 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 to vision, that finest discriminator of the 
 senses, to exercise all its subtlety on the 
 form and color of things, you must allow 
 that an attention distracted by other senses 
 cannot do it justice. So sculpture and paint- 
 ing have been created for those moments , 
 when, withdrawing from the taste and smell, 
 the temperature and sound of things, you 
 wish to see how they look. 
 
 If the distinctly visual character of the 
 visual arts is kept in mind, and the auditory 
 character of the auditory arts, I believe that 
 it is hardly possible that one could assert 
 honestly that he enjoyed the sights and 
 sounds of nature, as sights and sounds^ more 
 than those of art, provided that any good 
 art has ever represented them. Does he en- \} 
 joy the sun falling through the window on 
 the plaster wall of his room, or on a row of 
 kitchenware, more than he enjoys a Vermeer 
 picture? Can he honestly say that he has 
 ^11 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 seen more beauty in the red m eat of a butcher's 
 shop than is expressed in a Teniers interior? 
 If so, let him compute how much time he 
 has actually spent in looking at those sights, 
 not as kitchens and shops, but as light and 
 color. If he now sees beauty in them, who 
 taught him to but Vermeer and Teniers 
 themselves? It is safe to say that no one 
 who ever caught the charm of real light on 
 a plain surface, or of the exquisite colors in 
 real meat and vegetables, ever called in ques- 
 tion the value of Dutch painting, that least 
 pretentious of schools, which aimed only to 
 call to our attention what is under our very 
 noses. 
 
 It is hard to believe that any one delights 
 more in actual tragedies of nature than in 
 the tragedies of Shakespeare, or that he has 
 neighbors more entertaining than the mus- 
 keteers of Dumas or Kipling. Has he ever 
 heard a natural sound more sweet than the 
 
 178 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 shepherd's pipe in " Tristan " ? Is a natural 
 cave so much more impressive than the cav- 
 ern of a great cathedral ? 
 
 Curiously enough our use of words belies 
 us. If a woman is very stately, we call her 
 " statuesque," that is as beautiful as sculpture. 
 A very exquisite bit of natural scenery we 
 call "picturesque," that is, fine enough for 
 painting. A sufficiently charming voice is 
 named " musical," a sufficiently striking situ- 
 ation, " dramatic." Thus, as soon as nature 
 shows a particular kind of excellence, we 
 indicate our approval by calling it artistic. 
 We can give no higher praise. We have by 
 this very speech betrayed our conviction 
 that nature reconstructed by human nature 
 attains an eminence which nature left alone 
 only at times can do by chance. 
 
 Art is barren if it does not keep to nature 
 as its model, and if it does not strive to in- 
 terpret rather than to modify what it sees. 
 179 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 The highest art is supremely natural, as the 
 criterion of perfected nature is its approach 
 to art. It is a nomenclature of convenience 
 rather than of philosophy which divides them. 
 If, then, the best art is always based upon 
 a study of natural phenomena, and the most 
 significant, beautiful, and expressive in na- 
 ture is seized upon as peculiarly fitted to 
 live in art, how draw the line between aspects 
 of life which grew into each other by such 
 imperceptible degrees ? How can the natural 
 impulses of men to sing, to dance, to whistle, 
 to color, to build, to tell stories, and to re- 
 cord natural phenomena in natural materials, 
 become suddenly other than nature? We 
 do not wish, of course, to obliterate a dis- 
 tinction between the practical and the artistic 
 sides of life. Both exist, and both have their 
 unique values. We are only anxious to put 
 the distinction where it belongs. The natural 
 object in becoming an object for art passes 
 i8o 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 through certain changes in emphasis and in 
 limitation, whereby one aspect, out of the 
 infinite number of possible aspects, is chosen 
 for undisturbed contemplation. Natural ob- 
 jects when represented in the visual and 
 auditory arts (for our present arts are all for 
 the eye and ear) are deprived of their other 
 avenues of sense approach, for the sake of 
 emphasizing vision and hearing respectively. 
 The eye and ear, because they are capable 
 of finer discrimination, of a longer stimu- 
 lation without fatigue, and of stimulation 
 from a distance rather than by contact, are 
 peculiarly adapted to give us representations 
 of the world without entangling our own 
 organism too much with the stimulating 
 bodies. Our attention need not be diverted 
 from the object to ourselves, as it is likely 
 to be in stimulations of smell, taste, pain, and 
 the muscle senses. Helen Keller derives un- 
 doubted aesthetic enjoyment from touch, and 
 i8i 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 smell, but with most of us those senses are too 
 untrained to give us intelligent conceptions of 
 anything. The so-called lower senses may 
 all be involved indirectly in the imagery of 
 literature or of other arts, but directly they 
 can as a general rule only affect but not 
 communicate. Since art is essentially a com- 
 munication of a particular view of nature 
 from one mind to another, these less articu- 
 late senses are of little direct value for art. 
 Art sacrifices them to nature. 
 
 This sacrifice which art makes for the sake 
 of a peculiar message is, as we have seen, its 
 constant characteristic. Art as a whole sac- 
 rifices the lower senses. The separate arts 
 make a still further sacrifice of certain ma- 
 terials, certain sensations, certain emotions, 
 certain practical advantages which the natural 
 world might boast, all for the sake of the 
 consequent emphasis which they may place 
 upon a view of nature, which otherwise in 
 182 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 this multitude of appeals might remain un- 
 noticed. For art, the subtleties, the fine dis-\ 
 tinctions of nature are all-important. They 
 are important for their own sakes. It will 
 not allow us to overlook them. It is not 
 willing that confused practical experiences 
 shall constitute all that we know of life, but 
 it insists that separate aspects of it are worth 
 knowing in themselves. ^ 
 
 The human family exists not only to be 
 reared, reformed, loved, or hated ; but to be 
 looked at, to be listened to, to be under- 
 stood. The fine arts, by gently withdrawing 
 men and things from the circle of our immedi- 
 ate practical influence, make us see and hear 
 them as we never did before. We have lei- 
 sure to contemplate, since we cannot change. 
 Busy as we may be with handling sinners, 
 we forget what sin is in its essence. A great 
 epic like " Paradise Lost " or the "Inferno" 
 re-informs us. We forget in the midst of 
 183 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 particular disputes the essential stupidity of 
 war until a novel like "War and Peace" 
 makes us more intelligent. We are only 
 irritated by dull people until the ladies of 
 Jane Austen or the farmers of Thomas 
 Hardy, reeducate us as to the charm of ab- 
 surdity. We may have been kind to work- 
 ingmen, but did we ever see them until 
 Millet pointed them out? 
 
 Is there any advantage in truth for its own 
 sake ; in knowing things as they are, because 
 they are that way ? If so, who but artists, 
 from the Greek tragedians and Shakespeare 
 to Hawthorne and the Russian novelists, 
 have taught us how crime once committed 
 cats into varying temperaments ? Who but 
 artists have shown us how fatally a settled 
 boredom reacts on a Madame Bovary or a 
 Hedda Gabler? Moralists pass judgments 
 on them ; but artists present the facts for us 
 to make our own judgments. Or it may be 
 184 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 that It is no matter of conduct, for art is an 
 impartial interpreter of life, but that it is a 
 matter of lights and colors or the subtle sug- 
 gestion of words that it wishes to make more 
 plain. Perhaps we do not know how colors 
 are reflected on each other or how they change 
 in shadow. We may not know how delicate 
 is the modeling of a face. We have never 
 thought to "listen" for the stillness of a Gre- 
 cian urn, until an artist more sensitive than 
 we has educated our dull ears or has known 
 how to express what we felt but vaguely. v 
 
 How is America ever to be understood 
 by critical outsiders ? Science and industry, 
 newspapers and cables have not accomplished 
 this revelation of our character. Only when we 
 are revealed by a national art, a literature, an 
 architecture, a music, will aliens understand. 
 
 In time, who knows what we may all see 
 for ourselves in nature ? But we shall see and 
 hear it through our apprenticeship In art. 
 185 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 Art does not, like science, inform us of the 
 world in practical results. It simply presents 
 a given aspect of things, removed from cer- 
 tain customary relations which confuse its 
 individuality, and transferred for the sake of 
 greater emphasis to a world of its own. It is 
 interpreted by the artist in a way to pass on 
 inevitably the vision he has caught. 
 
 The artist is, in the strict sense, not a 
 teacher, not a reformer, not an inventor or 
 a man of action, but a seer. He has better 
 eyes and ears than we, and it is his function 
 A to look and to tell us what he sees. More- 
 over, it is not only his function to pass on 
 what he sees, but to transmit the emotion 
 with which he sees it. Most of us are not 
 only dull of vision but slow of feeling. We 
 not only do not see the reality of things, but 
 we do not know how to take them. 
 
 The great tragedian presents to us the 
 reality of human catastrophes, and he does it 
 i86 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 in such a fashion as to draw from us the pity 
 and fear which are their due. The sculptor 
 not only presents the abiding possibilities of 
 the human body, but he will not let us take 
 them lightly. He so presents them that we 
 must be awed as he has been by their essen- 
 tial majesty. 
 
 The musical composer reveals to us the 
 possibility of rhythms and sounds at play 
 with one another, and forces us to be op- 
 pressed or amused by their inter-relations as 
 he has been. The fact of the possibilities of 
 sound in a Beethoven scherzOy if we know it 
 artistically, must be reinforced by our feeling 
 the humor of the thing as Beethoven did. 
 Otherwise we have not heard. Surely no one 
 but a man who is willing to confess that he 
 does not care to know human nature, color 
 nature, sound nature, word nature, in its 
 completeness, and who does not care to share 
 the emotions which this nature arouses in 
 
 187 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART 
 
 the mind of men more sensitive to the high 
 truth of things than he, can dare to say that 
 art is for him a negligible quantity. It is also 
 a negligible quantity for his horse ; because 
 it feeds the mouth of neither, and the spirit 
 is not hungry. 
 
 If any one protest that he can see these 
 things for himself in nature, let him try it. 
 It is not so easy. He must be taught, and 
 that not by information alone, but by con- 
 tagion. He must have daily intercourse with 
 art works as with acquaintances, for emo- 
 tional nature cannot be transmitted by a 
 formula. 
 4"" There are other things in life, but this one 
 province is the artist's own. He only can 
 cut a cross-section of life experience, of what- 
 ever sort, and, by freeing it from all entan- 
 gling relations, construct for it an enduring 
 form where we may contemplate it, feel it, 
 and thereby know It. 
 
 i88 
 
ART AND NATURE 
 
 Art is the great sensitive intelligence. 
 Science tells us what things were, and what 
 they shall be ; but art tells us what they are. 
 It transmits the fact and the emotion which 
 is its due. It crystallizes from the chaos of 
 experiences the relations of a moment, the 
 pose of an instant, one clash of motives, one 
 mesh of absurdities, one trick of words, one 
 of the infinite combinations of sound with 
 motion ; and that which would have slipped 
 by us unnoticed has been made eternal. Art 
 is that high activity of nature by which it 
 interprets its own emotional reaction upon 
 itself. 
 
 Only he who is so entangled with life that 
 he is indifferent to knowing it, can turn his 
 back on that pure mirrorer of his own ac- 
 tivities who, for every secret which she has 
 revealed, has still a thousand locked within 
 her breast. 
 
 THE END 
 
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