life. If the House of Commons persists in exhibiting itself as a club, it will assuredly abdicate its functions, and commit them to more energetic and less responsible hands, as unfortunately it has done already to a great extent. This dislike to treating a question of disfranchisement or political disability is all the more impolitic, if, as is generally believed, the House would not refuse to entertain the question should it come practically before them. It is difficult to conceive that it could successfully maintain the exclusion of the clergy from a seat in the House, after a bona fide return, and if the constituency were resolute. When the House was far more despotic than it now is, the repeated election for Clare made it impossible to retain the disabling statutes against the Catholics. The continued return of Baron Rothschild for the city of London did similar service in removing Jewish disabilities. The House cannot descend to a contest with a constituency. Such a course is at once undignified and destructive; the former, because a great assembly cannot be compromised by the introduction of a few men whom it may not like; the latter, because it affects to control that freedom of choice by which, and by which alone, the House of Commons does exist, and can command respect. If indeed at some future time the question is raised anew, and the Act of 1801 be repealed, it would be unjust to exact a formal renunciation of the clerical sta tus. This is a needless invasion of conscience. But the Legislature may and, perhaps, should adopt the suggestion made by Tooke himself, by disabling all such persons as might be elected from receiving any benefice from the Crown or its ministers. There is enough and to spare of intrigue in the career of lawyers. The military and naval services are represented to their own benefit. It would be as well to check all aspirations after ecclesiastical patronage. There will always be enough candidates for ministerial gifts outside, without selling the sanctuary for the sake of parliamentary support within the walls of the House. J. E. THOROLD ROGERS. The Contemporary Review. THE MORALITY OF LITERARY ART. BY H. A. PAGE. IT has undoubtedly been somewhat unfortunate for us in England that our word morality, more especially in relation to literature and art, has taken such a narrow and arbitrary meaning. Reactions usually leave a residuum of bad influences; and in the reaction against the false elements imported into art under the plea of teaching, we sometimes meet with an implicit denial that art has any any relation to the moral sphere. The result has been that Beauty and Truth, which, as Goethe pointed out long ago, are but different sides of one reality, have been rudely sundered; and the prevailing idea of the artist is very much that of one who "wildly works without a conscience or an aim." We therefore find ourselves under the necessity of explaining and justifying our title in the outset; for a common ground established, and a common road resolved on, many wranglings may be saved at the crossways, and the journey made the more pleasant for all concerned. We must set out then with the simple and what might seem needless statement, that when a work of art is declared to "have no moral," that does not carry the same meaning as if it were said that it had no moral bearings. Indeed, strictly taken, the one attribute will be in the inverse ratio of the other. Art permits not the protrusion of purely individual regards through that sublimating medium of the imagination in which lies its true charın. If therefore opinion, sentiment, or prejudice be consciously interjected, it matters not how noble its root, in the very same measure will the work be made autobiographic, and lose its artistic value. For in art, as we shall shortly see, opinion is of permanent worth in the degree that it reflects not the individual but the time. But what pertains to the sphere of conventional morality is of the individual and the intellect. At highest it is a thing of opinion and circumstance, and therefore a divisive element, whose groundwork, resting on logical appeal, must oppose itself to art, inasmuch as it suffers not the formal incompleteness through which by suggestion art attains its highest expression. Each new work or part of a work, so far as it embodies a dogmatic statement, will thus contradict or supersede what has gone before it. Hence, for instance, the confusion which from first to last runs through the great work of Milton, and the opposition between his "formal purpose" and the true lesson of the poem, which, being a widening of our sympathies, attracts us to Satan in a wholly indescribable manner. Hence, too, the ethical antithesis between picture and lesson in Richardson's earlier novels. On the other hand, what pertains to humanity, and is thus of universal regard, is the matter and the end of art, and the organ of this is the heart or imagination. It is an old idea that men are united by their hearts and separated by their intellects; and readers of Swedenborg will remember the ludicrous picture he draws of the philosophers in the under-world walking in harmony till the unlucky streams of light rayed out upon each other from the backs of their heads. And certainly this is quite true of the formal or abstractive intellect when it unduly intrudes into the sphere of art; it teaches by separation, by distinction, by division: the end of art is to teach by synthesis and harmonizing of the moral being, and the two influences are thus for ever opposed to each other. All this we shall endeavor to develop and fully illustrate further on; meanwhile it may be permitted us to remark, that if there is any truth in the above statement, it should set completely at rest the vexed question as to what true teaching is, and how far the artist is a teacher. "To tell me something," says Hegel," is little in comparison with making me feel more deeply," This strikes the very keynote to pedagogic philosophy; for there is no true insight that rests not apon affection and self-sacrifice. The emotions are the mediums of all deep impressions, as heat makes possible the stamp upon the wax and the figure on the iron. The one requisite of all teaching designed to be affective is, that behind the intellectual form presented to the eye of the mind there be an unconscious and reserved store of sympathy. The great lessson lies not so much in the subject matter, let it be what it may, as in the subtle attractiveness of manner and spirit in which it is conveyed, and of which the teacher is in a very feeble degree conscious, if indeed he is so at all. That "example is better than precept" is a very old saw ; but in the battle of opinions and the evanescent nature of their hold, along with the permanent totality of life and sympathy which a real work of art encloses, we have a vigorous and perpetual application of it. In the one case we behold only what was thought; in the other we are made to feel as other men have felt, and in the deeper sense "depth is height," and feeling is but another name for doing. There is no true teaching, but only pedantic endeavor, where there is not more or less of this dramatic faithfulness; the master must come down from the unclouded heights of his knowledge into the mists and vapors of the scholars ignorance, if he would conduct him to the shining summits. Hence perhaps the significance of Carlyle's remark, that no man is wholly a poet, and that there is no man but is something of one. artist is a teacher, indeed, simply because he has more power than others of thus abandoning the individual sphere, and of making all his more memorable experiences pillars and pedestals on which his imagination may spring up into the region of the universal, enabling him by appeal to the emotions to exalt and purify others. In the very measure he does this he teaches us, translating all material facts and relations into signs of deeper facts and relations, in which lie the secret bonds linking man to man, through all the varied and peculiar circumstances that may divide and distinguish men from each other. An In the calm though often unconscious determination after truth, in the development of events, characters, and moods, lies the essentially moral element of art. And this probably includes all lower forms of morality; for in the depth of sympathy and the intensity of experience, which alone can make possible such clear impartiality of delineation, all those personal, local, and temporary regards, which minister division, dissolve and disappear, leaving in solution the very essence of, ethical relations which it is the business of critics and commentators to deduce, explain, and apply. The man who only from necessity or interest acts in conformity with conventional rule, can hardly be called a moral man, and so the chances are that a book will be unmoral which narrows its lesson within the same formal limits. Both oppose the lower to the higher, the mere dress to the living hody, which, again, is but the dress of the spirit. "Every true work of art has its moral, but, like the vital element in man, it is at once hidden and revealed, and will depend entirely upon him who seeks for it." In further considering the subject, it will give clearness to our thoughts if we group them round central laws. With this view we will now proceed to consider and explain these three ruling laws in the realm of art-the law (1) of Truth; (2) of Sympathy; and (3) of Reserve. I. The law of Truth may be regarded as determining the formal elements with which the artist must deal, and his relation to them. It takes cognizance of the conditions of the period in which he lives, and fixes how far he can use them without violating the other two laws just named. Looking at art through this law, it translates itself into history, properly speaking; and it only recovers its true and distinctive character when we come to view it through the laws of Sympathy and Reserve. All art is so far history; but art becomes history not by recording facts, but by spiritualizing them, by making them the body of higher truths than history can legitimately deal with, because in the unity of conception, which is the characteristic element of art, there lurks the totality of the life of a period. Thus we read Greek life better in Homer and Eschylus than in Thucydides; the præ-Elizabethan era more clearly in Shakespere than in the chroniclers; and see the last-century life of Scotland more vividly in Robert Burns' lightning-snatches than in Dr. Carlyle's scattered details. Art and history stand to each other as the wine and the pearl,-the one dissolves in the other, but only to be held in a subtle solution which adds mightily to the influence of both. Not otherwise does the poet laureate read it when he says :— "All the past of time reveals A bridal dawn of thunder-peals, And here it seems to us the positivists err so fatally in their classification. By the determination to read the spirit only through external marks, they reduce art to the level of mere invention, or as Goethe would say, draw the spiritual itself down into the earthly. With them the 'elements of history become, not the body, but the essential substance of art, and the real distinction as between art and history is thus totally lost. We shall see by-and-by that it is of importance to recover this distinction, else a wide door is opened for slipping out of view what constitutes the truly moral element in art; the presence of this being what properly differentiates creation from all beside. In other words, it is incumbent on the artist to seek a crowning unity, which shall form a spiritual atmosphere around his work, causing it in every portion to reflect the unfathomable mystery and movement of life itself. By the exhaustless significance which it thus attains the work holds relation to all times alike. But with science it is wholly different; it lies altogether outside this atmosphere, and has no right to create for unity's sake, or, in other words, for thought's sake, but only to observe and to record faithfully for fact's sake alone. With each fresh fact, however insignificant, science must change its ground; art remains substantially unaffected by any such advance. The positivist can determine clearly enough how far individual works are the truthful expression of prevailing ideas and tendencies, so far as these were formal or historical in their character; but he has no means of reaching that synthesis of existence, in seizing which lies the real power of the artist. Even admitting that the positivist test was true in itself, it must fail in comparing and in assigning significance to different orders of art. For works of art, though genuine, differ much in worth and meaning to humanity. Ovid, Tibullus, and Petronius Arbiter may each on the positivist rule be true reflections of their time; but unquestionably they are not so valuable as Homer, Eschylus, and Sophocles, who must therefore have been something more than they were. It is this something we must try to catch and estimate. One man's work not only differs from another's, but different ages differ decisively in their value to future times as art-producing. And M. Taine and his friends, while they do so much to widen our view, and make us appreciate what we might have overlooked, completely fail to assist us in this direction. That desideratum we hope to find to some extent supplied in the latter portion of this article; for our two laws, in the first place, conclusively distinguish art from what is not art; and in the second, supply us with principles for determining the varying value of what are admittedly real works of art. 串 The first thing we have to consider under this law of Truth is the ever increasing influence of literary forms which, having become historic, tend to dominate later literatures, whose spirit is wholly alien to that out of which they sprung. And this enters into the essence of our subject; for by forms we do not mean the mere words in which thoughts and feelings deposit themselves, but those elements of opinion and belief which direct and control modes of express on, substantially giving life to a literature and distinguishing it from all other literatures. It is by ministry of these in art-creation that the spirit of a people becomes a subtle medium, determining rhythm and so much more; and by faithfulness to which the poet becomes national and his work a history, enclosing softly though unconsciously the inmost life of his time. It should be noted, however, that mere words -single words-do sometimes come to bear deep significance through the very opposition in which, by intensity of insight, they may seem to stand to old ideas and modes of expression. If Shakespere, for instance, was ignorant of Roman life, assuredly his artistic instincts amply atone for his defect By the use of the term "people," in a non-Roman sense in a Roman play, he only gives real life and value to a word which else had been a mere dead shell, empty and colorless. This in itself is a good proof of the justice the true artist will do to the ideas and opinions of his own time, and that not in spite of his deeper insight, but because of it. Mr. Maurice has some fine remarks on this in his "Representation of the People," pp. 3 and 98. By rhythm we do not mean mere arrangements of words, but the natural and balanced sequence of events and incidents, which is determined by elements more subtle than is usually conceived. We shall see hereafter that the dominating influence of traditional forms is to be traced through all later Latin literature, which, moon-like, lives only by the reflection of an older light, as well as in much of the art of the earlier Christian centuries and certainly in most of that of the Renaissance. All such art has a tendency to become false and immoral by (1) setting itself outside the real atmosphere of the time; and (2) by the despising of those elements of progress which must have brought new and quickening light to the moral consciousness of men. Had we space, we might find some remarkable proofs of the truth of our position in the fact that primitive literature with its open healthfulness and sunny creative strength was not what exercised this power over more artifical times, but mostly the literature of transition periods, when the old ideas were in an agony of conflict with new tendencies, and when men sought to supply their want of real faith by the decoration of dead forms and a fanciful but half-hopeless playing with them. We thus derive one very conclusive test as to works of art. Having determined how far they are, in their inmost spirit and tendency, true to their time, we are half-way on the road to settling the question of their morality. The statement that a work which is moral in one age may be immoral in another is based upon deeper reasons than those often given. Essential morality never changes, but the relation in which each new generation stands to it is modified by the restrictions which must accompany more complex conditions and experiences. Civilization, indeed, takes hostages of art, and requires that her laws be not violated in idea any more than in fact. The wild and unconscious freedom of the artist is thus limited on a hundred sides, simply because as a true child of his time he must respect the laws which a genuine morality has suggested as being necessary for the preservation of social purity. It would take too long even to indicate how gradually and subtly every advance made by society comes to affect the form of its art, and that in the way of directly limiting the spontaneous action of the artist, only however to bring him fresh forces to act upon the conscious aquisi tions of his fellows. By demanding from him more and more the exercise of that sympathy which is the foundation of dramatic creation, he is led to seek a higher sphere by virtue of the very laws which first made him dependent on others. The more artificial social relations become, the more man abnegates the lower freedom-the freedom of caprice-only, however, to gain a higher freedom; and this is everywhere reflected in modern art where that art is true. And here we find a sharp point of contrast between the two great worlds of art-not, however, the two usually marked off from each other by lines more or less arbritary-heathen and Christian, classic and romantic. The distinction lies rather between the art which is the outcome of a primitive and simple life, and that which is the result of a highly civilized and artificial one. Homer here contrasts with Horace; the Nibelungenlied with Goethe, and Ossian with Robert Burns. Primitive art was not immoral, because unconsciousness was its pervading spirit; modern art cannot treat nature as it was then treated, because self-consciousness is its distinctive feature. To be unconscious of evil is in one sense to be free from its taint; and so far as the moderns have entered on the forbidden fields of nature without outraging modern requirements, it has been because of some of the health of early life surviving through all the complications of civilization. In earlier times spirit and form are found in perfect harmony: this, however, is only because the higher possibilities of man in effort have not yet been realized. The first merit of early art is that it was natural; but of later art that it is victorious over nature-the one was free and spontaneous, the other is everywhere triumphant over obstacle and difficulty. In the one there is a constant tendency to fall into a forbidden sphere, and by consequence self-pleasurings alternate with the self-torturings that always supervene on secret indulgences; in the other no sphere is felt to be forbidden, and no pleasure is prohibited if it has been won in honor. But in one sense the principle of honor may be taken as the test of morality. Only it varies much at different periods. That of the Homeric age, for instance, was wholly different from ours. With the early Greeks honor was not only reai, but so real, that it justified what to us would be simply varied forms of lust. But judgment must be pronounced by considering the whole spirit, and not separate actions. To them the object of all aspiration existed in the battle-field of glory, and the heroes, having faced fearful deaths with streaming blood, returned flushed with such honor as not only excused open indulgence, but to them made it right. Having (by sacrifice in its simplest form, i. e. assertion of physical courage) proved themselves worthy and true to make their actions true, their fleshly endearments had a moral sanction, though often a different one from that of marriage. So far as they were unconscious of moral restrictions, following na-. ture openly and honestly, and so far as that unconsciousness is reflected in their art, making it symbolic for ever of the boyhood of humanity, their life and their work are moral. The one was real and the other was true, reflecting faithfully one element of human nature which, though not the highest, can never die any more than the highest, simply because it is human nature. With them there was no shame, and this is the secret of their power, for to a certain extent there must be an undoubted element of classicism in all true art. And this it must be that Schiller means when he writes: "The laws of propriety are foreign to innotion has given origin to them. But as soon cent natures; only the experience of corrupas that corruption has taken place, and natural innocence has vanished from manners, the laws of propriety are sacred, and moral feeling will not offend them. They have the same calidity in an artificial world as the laws of nature have in a world of innocence. But the very thing which constitutes the poet is that he banishes from himself everything which reminds him of an artificial world, that he may restore nature in her primitive simplicity. And if he has done this, he is thereby absolved from all laws by which a preverted heart seeks security against itself. He is pure, he is innocent, and whatever is permitted to innocent nature is permitted to him also. If thou who readest and hearest him art no longer innocent, and if thou canst not even momentarily become so by his purifying presence, it is thy misfortune, not his thou forsakest him, he did not sing for the." |
