Footnotes:
[Footnote 1: _One Poor Scruple._ By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. London: Longmans, 1899.]
[Footnote 2: We do not mean to imply that there is any close etymological relation between these two uses of the term.]
XVI.
A LIFE OF DE LAMENNAIS.
The appearance of a work by the Hon. W. Gibson on _The Abbe de Lamennais, and the Catholic Liberal Movement in France_, invites us to a new attempt to grapple with a problem which has so far met with no satisfactory solution, and probably never will. Up to a certain point we seem to follow more or less intelligently the working of the restless soul of De Lamennais; but at the last and great crisis of his life we find all our calculations at fault; "we try to understand him; we wish that penetrating into the inmost recesses of his wounded soul, we could force it to yield up its secret, and once more sympathize with him, perhaps console him; but we cannot. He is an enigma, as impenetrable as the rocks on his native sh.o.r.e."
From whatever point of view the story of his life is regarded, it presents itself as a tragedy. The believing Catholic sees there the ruin of a vocation to such a work as only a few souls in the history of the Church are called to accomplish--a ruin desperate and deplorable in proportion to the force of the talents and energies diverted from the right path. The non-Catholic or unbeliever cannot fail to be moved by contemplating the fruitless struggles of a mind so keen, a heart so enthusiastic in the cause of light and liberty--struggles ending in failure, perplexity, confusion, and misery. But while we allow a large element of mystery in his character which will never be eliminated, yet as we return time after time to gaze upon the picture of his life, as a whole, and in its details, the seemingly discordant items begin quietly to drop into their places one after another, and to exhibit unnoticed connections; and the idea of his distinctive personality begins to shape itself into a coherent unity.
It is not our purpose here to summarize Mr. Gibson"s admirable work, or to give even an outline of so well-known a history; but rather to attempt some brief criticism of the man himself, and incidentally of his views.
Temperament and early education are among the princ.i.p.al determinants of character; and certainly when we contrast Feli with his brother Jean, who presumably received the same home-training, we see how largely he was the creature of temperament. Jean was by nature the "good boy,"
tractable and docile; Feli, the unmanageable, the lawless, the violent.
While Jean was dutifully learning his lessons to order, Feli, the obstreperous, imprisoned in the library, was feeding his tender mind with Diderot, Montaigne, Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, and similar diet, and at twelve exhibited such infidel tendencies as made it prudent to defer his first Communion for some ten years.
From first to last, whether we consider his childish waywardness and outbreaks of violent pa.s.sion, which persevered in a less childish form through manhood; or the fits of intense depression and melancholy, alternating with spells of high nerve-tension and feverish excitement; or the restlessness and impatient energy which showed themselves always and everywhere, and at times drove him like a wild man into the woods, "seeking rest and finding none;" or the prophetic, not to say, the fanatical strain which breaks out in so much of his writing, especially in the _Paroles d"un Croyant_,--in all alike there is evident that predominance of the imaginative and emotional elements which, combined with intellectual gifts, const.i.tute genius as commonly understood. For such a character the training which would suffice for half a dozen good little Jeans would be wholly inadequate. So much fire and feeling ill submits to the yoke of self-restraint in matters moral or intellectual.
The mind is apt to be fascinated by the brilliant pictures of the imagination and to become a slave to the tyranny of a fixed idea; while the strength of pa.s.sionate desire paralyzes the power of free deliberation. It is precisely this self-restraint, the fruit of a careful education given and responded to, that we miss in De Lammenais both in his moral character and in his mind. Peace and tranquillity of soul are essential to successful thinking, more especially in philosophy; and in proportion as a brilliant imagination is a help, it is also a danger if let run riot. At times, wearied out with himself, he seems to have felt the need of retreat and quiet; but he was almost as const.i.tutionally incapable of keeping still, as certain modern statesmen in their retirement from public life. We smile when we hear him in the violent first fervour of his conversion, talking about becoming a Trappist, and, later, a Jesuit. He knew himself better when he shrank so long and persistently from the yoke of priesthood, and when, having yielded against his truer instincts to the indiscreet zeal of pious friends, he experienced an agony of repugnance at his first Ma.s.s. With different antecedents he might have profited by the yoke, but as things stood it could but gall him.
In spite of Mr. Gibson"s contention to the contrary, it can hardly be maintained that De Lamennais was well educated in the strict sense of the expression. The evidence he adduces points to a marvellous diversity of interests, and even to close and careful reading. But on the whole he was self-taught, and a self-taught man is never educated. Without intercourse with other living minds, education is impossible. This is indeed hoisting De Lammenais with his own petard. For, according to "Traditionalism," the mind is paralyzed by isolation, and can be duly developed only in society. An overweening self-confidence and slight regard for the labours of other thinkers usually characterizes self-taught genius. This it was that led him to cut all connection with the philosophy of the past, and to attempt to build up, single-handed, a new system to supplant that which had been the fruit of the collective mind-labour of centuries. "I shall work out," he writes calmly to the Abbe Brute, "a new system for the defence of Christianity against infidels and heretics, a very simple system, in which the proofs will be so rigorous that unless one is prepared to give up the right of saying _I am_, it will be necessary to say _Credo_ to the very end." Only a man with a very slight and superficial acquaintance with the endeavours of previous apologists, and the extreme difficulty of the problem, could speak with such portentous self-confidence. And the result bears out this remark. For grand and imposing as is the structure of the _Essai sur l"Indifference,_ it rests on fallacies so patent that none but a man of no philosophical training could have failed to perceive them. Here it is that the self-taught man comes to grief and often misses the mere truisms of traditional teaching.
Doubtless ecclesiastical philosophy and theology was then more than ever painfully fossilized, and altogether lifeless and out of sympathy with the spirit of the age. It needed to be quickened, adapted and applied to modern exigencies. The undue intrusion of metaphysics into the domain of positive knowledge needed checking; the value of _consensus communis_ as a criterion required to be insisted on, defended, and exactly defined.
With characteristic impetuosity, De Lamennais, like Comte, must bundle metaphysics out of doors altogether as a merely provisional but illusory synthesis, necessary for the human intellect in its adolescence, but to be discarded in its maturity; and thereupon he proceeds to erect his system of Traditionalism mid-air, quite unconscious that in clearing away metaphysics he has deprived the structure of its only possible foundation. But this is the man all over. Because there is a truth in Traditionalism, therefore, it is the whole and only truth; because metaphysics alone can do little, it is therefore unnecessary and worthless. Had he spent but a fraction of the time and trouble he gave to the elaboration of his own system, in a liberal and critical study of that which he desired to supersede, his genius might have accomplished a work for the Church which is still halting badly on its way to perfection. One feels something like anger in contemplating such hot-headed zeal standing continually in its own light, and frustrating with perverse ingenuity the very end which it was most desirous to realize. For no one can deny that from his first conversion to his unhappy death De Lamennais was dominated by the highest and n.o.blest and most unselfish motives; that he was a man of absolute sincerity of purpose.
His earliest enthusiasm was for the defence and exaltation of the Catholic Faith, for the liberation of the Church from the bonds of nationalism and Erastianism. Even those who repudiate altogether the extreme Ultramontanism of De Maistre and De Lamennais must allow their conception to be one of the boldest and grandest which has inspired the mind of man. He realized more vividly than many that the cause of the Church and of society, of Catholicism and humanity, were one and the same. It was the very intensity and depth of his convictions that made him so importunate in pressing them on others, so intolerant of delay, so infuriated by opposition. For indeed nothing is more common than to find a thousand selfishnesses co-existing and interfering with a dominant unselfishness, lessening or totally destroying its fruitfulness for good. A man who is unselfish enough to devote his fortune to charity will not necessarily be free from faults which may more than undo the good he proposes.
The same hastiness of thought which moved him to a wholesale, indiscriminate condemnation of metaphysics, led him to conclude that because hitherto no happy adjustment of the relations between Church and State had been devised, there could be no remedy save in their total severance. Doubtless such a severance would be better, if Gallicanism were the only alternative; or if the Church"s liberty and efficiency were to be seriously curtailed. A superficial glance might fancy a fundamental discrepancy in this matter, as well as in the questions of toleration, and of the freedom of the press, between the official teaching of Gregory XVI. and Pius IX., and that of Leo XIII. But a closer inspection shows no alteration of principle, and only a recognition of altered circ.u.mstances, either necessitating a connivance at inevitable evils, or totally changing the aspect of the question. But De Lamennais should have learnt from his own teaching that liberty does not mean the independence of isolation, but the full enjoyment of all the means necessary for perfect self-development; that it does not mean the weakness of dissociation, but the strength of a perfectly organized a.s.sociation for mutual help and protection. And this holds good, not for individuals alone, but for societies, and for Church and State. Aiming at one common end, the perfection of humanity, they cannot but gain by a.s.sociation and lose by dissociation. Each is weaker even, in its own sphere, apart from the other. It is an unreal abstraction that splits man into two beings--a body and a soul; that draws a clean, hard-and-fast line between his temporal and eternal welfare; that commits the former interest to one society, the latter to another, absolutely distinct and unconnected. But all this holds true only in the hypothesis of a nation of Christians or Theists.
When a large fraction of the community has ceased to believe in Christianity and the Church, the demands of justice and reason are different. It may well be allowed that, to determine the exact relation of the Catholic Church and Christian State, and the law of their organization into one complex society, is a problem for whose perfect solution we must wait the further development of the ideas of ecclesiastical and civil society. But to wait for growth of subjective truth was just what De Lamennais could not do. He saw that past solutions of the problem had been unsuccessful; that in most cases the Church was eventually drawn into bondage under the State as its creature and instrument in the cause of tyranny and oppression; that it was insensibly permeated with the local and national spirit, differentiated from Catholic Christendom, and severed from the full influence of its head, the Vicar of Christ. The independence of the Church he rightly judged to be the great safeguard of the people against the tyranny of their temporal rulers. In the face of that world-wide spiritual society, whose voice was at once the voice of humanity and the voice of G.o.d, he felt that "iniquity would stop its mouth," and injustice be put to shame. Yet all this seemed to him impossible so long as the Church depended on the State for temporalities, and because he could devise no form of a.s.sociation that would be guarantee against all abuses, he therefore insisted on total, severance, not merely as expedient for the present pressure, but as a divine and eternal principle.
When, therefore, it seemed to him that Gregory XVI. had condemned Ultramontanism, it was, to De Lamennais, as though he had condemned the cause of the Church and of humanity, and thrown the weight of his authority into that of Gallicanism. Here again we see how his mental intensity and impatience reduced him to the dilemma which found solution in his apostasy. Holding as he did to the Papal infallibility in a form far more extreme than that subsequently approved by the Vatican Council, he was bound in consistency to accept the Pope"s decision as infallible in respect to its expediency and in all its detail. Thus it seemed to him that the ideal for which he had lived was shattered by a self-inflicted blow. The infallible voice of humanity had declared against the cause of humanity. He found himself compelled, in virtue of his principles, to choose between two alternatives. Either the cause of humanity, as he conceived it, was not the cause of G.o.d; or else the Pope was not the Vicar of Christ and the divinely-appointed guardian of that cause. But of the two denials the former was now to him the least tolerable. "Catholicism," he said, "was my life, because it was that of humanity." _Sacramenta, propter homines_; the Church was made for man, and not man for the Church. Given the dilemma, who shall blame his choice? But the dilemma was purely subjective and imaginary. Though truths are never irreconcilable, the exaggerations of truth may well be so.
Had he possessed that intellectual patience in perplexity, without which not only faith, but true science, is impossible, he would have been driven not to apostasy, but to a careful re-sifting of his views, issuing, perhaps, in a reconciliation of apparently adverse positions, or at all events in a confession of subjective, uncertainty and confusion. Faith, in the wider sense of the word, would have bid him to believe, without seeing, what we have lived to see under Leo XIII.
This seems to be the intellectual aspect of his defection, though of course there were many accelerating causes at work. Perhaps if Gregory XVI. had met his appeal with a few words of simple explanation and advice, instead of with that mysterious reticence which is falsely supposed to be the soul of diplomacy, the issue might have been as happy as it was miserable. De Lamennais himself, in his _Affaires de Rome_, makes the same remark in so many words. Again, the illiberal and ungenerous persecution of his triumphant adversaries, who endeavoured to goad him into some open act of rebellion in order to bring him under still heavier condemnation, can scarcely have failed to embitter and harden a soul naturally disposed to pessimism and melancholy. Nor can we omit from the influences at work upon him, that dramatic instinct which makes a mediocre and colourless att.i.tude impossible for those who are strongly under its influence. Perhaps no nation is more governed by it than the French, with their partiality for _tableaux_ and _sensation_; and in De Lamennais its presence was most marked, as the pages of his _Paroles_ will witness. In the _Too Late_ with which he received the overtures of Pius IX.; in the studied sensationalism of his funeral arrangements, and in many other minute points, we are made sensible that if his life culminated in a tragedy, the tragic aspect of it was not altogether displeasing to him. Still it would be a grievous slur on so great a character to suppose that such a weakness could have had any considerable part in his steady and deliberate refusal to see a priest at the last. This is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that he believed he could not be absolved without accepting the condemnation of his own views, and so abandoning the cause of humanity. While under the spell of his imaginary dilemma, he was constrained to follow the rule for a perplexed conscience, and to choose what seemed to him the less of two evils.
After his ideal had been destroyed, and the Church could no longer be for him the Saviour of the Nations, he threw himself without reserve into the cause of humanity and liberty. But his aims were now almost entirely destructive and revolutionary. His enthusiasm was rather a hatred of the things that were, than an ardent zeal for the things that ought to be; and the bitter elements in his character become more and more accentuated as he finds himself gradually thrust aside and forgotten--cast off by the Church, ignored by the revolution. Even his friends, with one or two exceptions, dropped off one by one; some fleeing like rats from a sinking ship, others perplexed at his obstinacy or offended by his violence; others removed by death or distance; and we see him in his old age poor and lonely, and intensely unhappy.
When dangerously ill in 1827, he exclaimed, on being told that it was a fine night, "For my peace, G.o.d grant that it may be my last." The prayer was not heard, for, as he felt on his recovery, G.o.d had a great work for him to do. How that work was done we have just seen. Feli de Lamennais, who would have been buried as a Christian in 1827, was buried as an infidel in 1854.
It is vain to contend that he was not a man of prayer. That he had a keen discernment in spiritual things is evident from his _Commentary on the Imitation_ and his other spiritual writings, as well as from the testimony of his young disciples at La Chenaie, to whom he was not merely a brilliant teacher, a most affectionate friend and father, but also a trusted guide in the things of G.o.d. Yet this would be little had we not also a.s.surance of his personal and private devoutness.
All this would make his unfortunate ending a stumbling-block to those who cannot acquiesce in the fact that in every soul tares and wheat in various proportions grow side by side, and that which growth is to be victorious is not possible to predict with certainty; who deem it impossible that one who ends ill could ever have lived well; or that one who loses his faith, or any other virtue, could ever at any time have really possessed it. There is indeed some kind of double personality in us all which is perhaps more observable in strongly-marked characters like De Lamennais, where, so to say, the bifurcating lines are produced further. Proud men have occasional moods of genuine humility; and habitual bitterness is allayed by intervals of sweetness; and conversely, there are ugly streaks in the fairest marble.
And as to the fate of that restless soul, who shall dare to speak dogmatically? We cling gladly to the story of the tear that stole down his face in death, and would fain see in it some confirmation of the view according to which the soul receives in that crucial hour a final choice based on the collective experience of its mortal life. We would hope that as there is a baptism of blood or of charity, so there may perhaps be some uncovenanted absolution for one who so earnestly loved mankind at large, and especially the poor and the oppressed; who in his old age and misery was found by their sick-bed; who willed to be with them in his death and burial. And yet we feel something of that agonizing uncertainty which forced from the aged Abbe Jean the bitter cry, "Feli, Feli, my brother!"
_Jan._ 1897.
XVII.
LIPPO, THE MAN AND THE ARTIST.
"What pains me most," writes the late Sir Joseph Crowe in the _Nineteenth Century_ for October, 1896, "is to think that the art of Fra Filippo, the loose fish, and seducer of holy women, looks almost as pure, and is often quite as lovely as that of Fra Giovanni Angelico of Fiesole." And indeed, if the fact be admitted, it cannot but be a shock to all those high-minded thinkers who have committed themselves unreservedly to the view that personal sanct.i.ty and elevation of character in the artist is an essential condition for the production of any great work of art, and especially of religious art. As regards the fact, we need not concern ourselves very long. If Rio and others, presumably bia.s.sed by the same theory, are inclined to see Lippi"s moral depravity betrayed in every stroke of his brush, yet the more general and truer verdict accords him a place among the great masters of his age, albeit beneath Angelico and some others. Beyond all doubt it must be allowed that even in point of spirituality and heavenliness of expression, he stands high above numbers of artists of pure life and blameless reputation; and this fact leaves us face to face with the problem already suggested as to the precise connection between high morality and high art--if any.
Plainly a good man need not be a good artist. Must a good artist be a good man? I suppose from a vague feeling in certain minds that it ought to be so, there rises a belief that it must be so, and that it is so; and from this belief a disposition to see that it is so, and to read facts accordingly. Prominent among the advocates of this view is Mr.
Ruskin in his treatment of the relation of morality to art. He holds "that the basis of art is moral; that art cannot be merely pleasant or unpleasant, but must be lawful or unlawful, that every legitimate artistic enjoyment is due to the perception of moral propriety, that every artistic excellence is a moral virtue, every artistic fault is a moral vice; that n.o.ble art can spring only from n.o.ble feeling, that the whole system of the beautiful is a system of moral emotions, moral selections, and moral appreciation; and that the aim and end of art is the expression of man"s obedience to G.o.d"s will, and of his recognition of G.o.d"s goodness." [1]
But a man who can characterize a vulgar pattern as immoral, plainly uses the term "morality" in some transcendental, non-natural sense, and therefore cannot be regarded as an exponent of the precise theory referred to. Still, as this larger idea of morality includes the lesser and more restricted, we may consider Mr. Ruskin and his disciples among those to whom the case of Lippo Lippi and many another presents a distinct difficulty. "Many another," for the principle ought to extend to every branch of fine art; and we should be prepared to maintain that there never has been, or could have been, a truly great musician, or sculptor, or poet, who was not also a truly good man. In a way the position is defensible enough; for one can, in every contrary instance, patch up the artist"s character or else pick holes in his work. Who is to settle what is a truly great work or a truly good man. But a position may be quite defensible, yet obviously untrue. Again, if by great art we mean that which is subordinated to some great and good purpose, we are characterizing it by a goodness which is extrinsic to it, and is not the goodness of art itself, as such. If the end of fine art is to teach, then its goodness must be estimated by the matter and manner of its teaching, and a "moral pocket-handkerchief" must take precedence of many a Turner. Yet it would even then remain questionable whether a good and great moral teacher is necessarily a good man. In truth, a good man is one who obeys his conscience, and whose conscience guides him right. If, in defect of the latter condition, we allow that a man is good or well-meaning, it is because we suppose that his conscience is erroneous inculpably, and that he is faithful to right order as far as he understands it. But one who sees right and wills wrong is in no sense good, but altogether bad. Allowing that for the solution of some delicate moral problems a certain height of tone and keenness of insight inseparable from habitual conscientiousness is necessary, yet mere intellectual ac.u.men, in the absence of any notably bia.s.sing influence, suffices to give us as great a teacher as Aristotle, who, if exonerated from graver charges, offers no example of astonishing elevation of heart at all proportioned to the profundity of his genius. We do not deny that in the case of free a.s.sent to beliefs fraught with grave practical consequences, the moral condition of the subject has much to do with the judgments of the intellect. But first principles and their logical issues belong to the domain of necessary truth; while in other matters a teacher may accept current maxims and sentiments with which he has no personal sympathy, and weave from all these a whole system of excellent and orthodox moral teaching. And if one may be a good moralist and a bad man, why _a fortiori_ may one not be a good artist and a bad man? If vice does not necessarily dim the eye to ethical beauty, why should it blind it to aesthetic beauty? In order to get at a solution we must fix somewhat more definitely the notion of fine art and its scope.
I think it is in a child"s book called _The Back of the North Wind_, that a poet is somewhat happily and simply defined as a person who is glad about something and wants to make other people glad about it too.
Yet mature reflection shows two flaws in this definition. First of all, the theme of poetry, or any other fine art, need not always be gladsome, but can appeal to some other strong emotion, provided it be high and n.o.ble. The tragedian is one who is thrilled with awe and sorrow, and strives to excite a like thrill in others. Again, though the craving for sympathy hardly ever fails to follow close on the experience of deep feeling; and though, as we shall presently see, fine art is but an extension of language whose chief end is intercommunion of ideas, yet this altruist end of fine art is not of its essence, but of its superabundance and overflow. Expression for expression"s sake is a necessity of man"s spiritual nature, in solitude no less than in society. To speak, to give utterance to the truth that he sees, and to the strong emotions that stir within his heart, is that highest energizing in which man finds his natural perfection and his rest. His soul is burdened and in labour until it has brought forth and expressed to its complete satisfaction the word conceived within it. Nor is it only within the mind that he so utters himself in secret self-communing; for he is not a disembodied intelligence, but one clothed with body and senses and imagination. His medium of expression is not merely the spiritual substance of the mind, but his whole complex being. Nor has he uttered his "word" to his full satisfaction till it has pa.s.sed from his intellect into his imagination, and thence to his lips, his voice, his features, his gesture. And when the mind is more vigorous and the pa.s.sion for utterance more intense, he will not be at rest while there is any other medium in which he can embody his conception, be it stone, or metal, or line, or colour, or sound, or measure, or imagery, which under his skilled hand can be made to shadow out his hidden thought and emotion. We cannot hold with Max Muller and others, who make thought dependent and consequent on language.
For it is evident, on a moment"s introspection, that thought makes language for itself to live in, just as a snail makes its own sh.e.l.l or a soul makes its own body. Who has not felt the anguish of not being able to find a word to hit off his thought exactly?--which surely means that the thought was already there unclothed, awaiting its embodiment. As the soul disembodied is not man, so thought not clothed in language is not perfect human thought. Its essence is saved, but not its substantial, or at least its desirable, completeness. A man thinks more fully, more humanly, who thinks not with his mind alone, but with his imagination, his voice, his tongue, his pen, his pencil. If, therefore, solitary contemplative thought is a legitimate end in itself; if it is that _ludus_, or play of the soul, which is the highest occupation of man, a share in the same honour must be allowed to its accompanying embodiment; to the music which delights no ear but the performer"s; to poetry, to painting, to sculpture done for the joy of doing, and without reference to the good of others communicating in that joy. And if the Divine Artist, whose lavish hand fills everything with goodness; who pours out the treasures of His love and wisdom in every corner of our universe; of whose greatness man knows not an appreciable fraction; who "does all things well" for the very love of doing and of doing well; who utters Himself for the sake of uttering, not only in His eternal, co-equal, all-expressive Word, but also in the broken, stammering accents of a myriad finite words or manifestations--if this Divine Artist teaches us anything, it is that man, singly or collectively, is divinest when he finds rest and joy in utterance for its own sake, in "telling the glory of G.o.d and showing forth His handiwork," or, as Catholic doctrine puts it, in praise; for praise is the utterance of love, and love is joy in the truth.
As most of the useful arts perfect man"s executive faculties, and thus are said to improve upon, while in a certain sense they imitate nature; so the fine arts extend and exalt man"s faculty of expression, or self-utterance, regarded not precisely as useful and _propter aliud_; but as pleasurable and _propter se_. Even the most uncultivated savage finds pleasure in some discordant utterance of his subjective frame of mind; and it is really hard to find any tribe so degraded as to show no rudiment of fine art, no sign of reflex pleasure in expression, and of inventiveness in extending the resources nature has provided us with for that end.
The artist as such aims at self-expression for its own sake. It is a necessity of his nature, an outpouring of pent-up feeling, as much as is the song of the lark. Of course we are speaking of the true creative artist, and not of the laborious copyist. If he subordinates his work as a means to some further end; if his aim is morality or immorality, truth or error, pleasure or pain; if it is anything else than the embodiment or utterance of his own soul, so far he is acting riot as an artist, but as a minister of morality, or truth, or pleasure, or their contraries.
If we keep this idea steadily in view, we can see how much truth, or how little, is contained in the various theories of fine art which have been advanced from the earliest times. We can see how truly art is a [Greek: mimaesis] an imitating of realities; not that art-objects are, as Plato supposes, faint and defective representations, vicegerent species of the external world, whose beauty is but the transfer and dim reflection of the beauty of nature. Were it so, then the mirror, or the camera, were the best of all artists. As expression, fine art is the imitation of the soul within; of outward realities as received into the mind and heart of the artist, in their ideal and emotional setting. The artist gives word or expression to what he sees; but what he sees is within him. His work is self-expression. We can from this infer where to look for a solution of the controversy between idealism and realism. We can also see how, owing to the essential disproportion between the material and sensible media of expression which art uses, and the immaterial and spiritual realities it would body forth, its utterances must always be symbolic, never literal. We can see how needlessly they embarra.s.s themselves who deny the name of fine art to any work whose theme is not beautiful, or which is not morally didactic. Finally, we can see that if fine art be but an extension of language, there can be no immediate connection between art as art, and general moral character; no more reason for supposing that skilful and beautiful self-utterance is incompatible with immorality, than that its absence is incompatible with sanct.i.ty.
Yet, as a matter of fact, and rightly, we judge of art not merely as art, or as expression; but we look to that which is expressed, to the inner soul which is revealed to us, to the "matter" as well as to the "form." And it maybe questioned whether our estimate of a work is not rather determined in most cases by this non-artistic consideration.
Obviously it is possible in our estimate of a landscape, to be drawn away from the artistic to the real beauty; from its merits as a "word,"
or expression, to the merits of the thing signified. And still more naturally is our admiration drawn from the artist"s self-utterance, to the self which he endeavours to utter, and we are brought into sympathy with his thought and feeling. Much of the fascination exercised over us by art, which precisely as art is rude and imperfect in many ways, is to be ascribed to this source. Though here we must remember that the soul is often more truly and artistically betrayed by the simple lispings of childhood than by the ornate and finished eloquence of a rhetorician.
It is in regard to the matter expressed, rather than to the mode of expression, that we have a right to look for a difference between such men as Lippo Lippi and Fra Angelico. According to a man"s inner tone and temperament and character, will be the impression produced upon him by the objects of his contemplation. These will determine him largely in the choice of his themes, and in the aspect under which he will treat them. Obviously in many cases there are n.o.ble themes of art for whose appreciation no particular delicacy of moral or religious taste is required. There is no reason why such a subject as the Laoc.o.o.n should make a different impression on a saint and on a profligate. It appeals to the tragic sense, which may be as highly developed in one as in the other. But if the Annunciation be the theme, we can well understand how differently it will impress a man of lively and cultured faith, a contemplative and mystic, with an appreciative and effective love of reverence and purity; and another whose faith is a formula, whose life is impure, frivolous, worldly. Why then is there not a more distinctly marked inferiority in the religious art of Lippi to that of Angelico?
Why does it look "almost as pure," and "often quite as lovely"? Two very clear reasons offer themselves in reply. First of all, the art of such a man as Angelico falls far more hopelessly short of his ideal. Most of the beauties which such a soul would find in the contemplation of Mary, or of Gabriel, are spiritual, moral, non-aesthetic, and can embody themselves in form and feature only most imperfectly. Given equal skill in expression, equal command of words, one man can say all that he feels, and more, while another is tortured with a sense of much more to be uttered, were it not unutterable. Perhaps it is in some hint of this hidden wealth of unuttered meaning that skilled eyes find in Angelico what they can never find in Lippi. A second reason might be found in the external influence exerted on the artist by society, its requirements, fashions, and conventions. It is plain that Lippi, left to himself, would never have chosen religious themes as such: it is equally plain, that having chosen them, he would naturally try to emulate and eclipse what was most admired in the great works of his predecessors and contemporaries. It would need little more than a familiar acquaintance with the great models, together with the artist"s discriminating observance, for a man of Lippi"s talent to catch those lines and shades of form and feature which hint at, rather than express, the inward purity, the reverence, the gentleness, with which he himself was so little in sympathy.
No doubt, were two such men equally skilled in all the arts of expression, in language, in verse, in song and music, in sculpture and painting, and acting, their general treatment of religious themes would be more glaringly different; but within the comparatively narrow limits of painting, we cannot reasonably expect more than we actually find.
The saint, as such, and the artist, as such, are occupied with different facets of the world; the former with its moral, the latter with its aesthetic beauty. Even were the artist formally to recognize that all the beauty in nature is but the created utterance of the Divine thought and love, and that the real, though unknown, term of his abstraction is not the impersonal symbol, but the person symbolized; yet it is not enough for sanct.i.ty or morality to be attracted to G.o.d viewed simply as the archetype of aesthetic beauty. On the other hand, one may be drawn, through the love of moral beauty in creatures, of justice, and mercy, and liberality, and truthfulness, to the love of G.o.d as their archetype, and yet be perfectly obtuse to aesthetic beauty; and thus again we see that high aestheticism is compatible with low morality, and conversely.
Doubtless when produced to infinity, all perfections are seen to converge and unite in G.o.d, but short of this, they retain their distinctness and opposition. At the same time, it cannot for a moment be denied that keenness of moral, and of aesthetic perception, act and react upon one another. He gains much morally whose eyes are opened to the innumerable traces of the Divine beauty with which he is surrounded, and there are aesthetic joys which are necessarily unknown to a soul which is selfish and gross--still more to a soul from which the glories of revealed religion are hidden, either through unbelief or sluggish indifference. Yet, on the whole, it may be said that sanct.i.ty is benefited by art more than art is by sanct.i.ty, especially where we deal with so limited a medium of expression as painting. And so it seems to us that, after all, there is nothing to surprise or pain us in the fact that "the art of a Fra Filippo, the loose fish, looks almost as pure, and is often quite as lovely as that of Fra Giovanni Angelico of Fiesoli."
_Dec._ 1896.
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