)rma al 3 1822019648443 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO TP-lF 3 1822019648443 X *7 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due JUN 2 7 1QQR IS. TAINE'S WORKS. UNIFORM LIBRARY EDITION. I2MO, GREEN CLOTH, $2.50 PER VOLUME. ENGLISH LITERATURE, 2 vols. ITALY, ROME, AND NAPLES, ITALY, FLORENCE, AND VENICE. ON INTELLIGENCE. 2 vols. LECTURES ON ART. First Series. Containing The Phi- losophy of Art ; The Ideal in Art. LECTURES ON ART. Second Series. Containing The Phi- losophy of Art in Italy ; The Philosophy of Art in the Netherlands ; The Philosophy of Art in Greece. NOTES ON ENGLAND. With Portrait. NOTES ON PARIS. A TOUR THROUGH THE PYRENEES. (THE SAME. Illustrated by Gustave Dore*. 8vo, cloth, $10.00 ; full morocco, $20.00.) THE ANCIENT REGIME. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 3 vols. THE MODERN REGIME. Vol. I. THE MODERN REGIME. Vol. II. JOURNEYS THROUGH FRANCE. ENGLISH LITERATURE. With 28 portraits. 4 vols. in box. Cheaper Edition. 8vo. $6.00. ENGLISH LITERATURE. Condensed by John Fiske. One vol. 8vo, $1.40 net. HENRY HOLT & CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK. LECTURES ON ART ff H. TAINE OF JBSTHBTICS AND OF THK HISTORY OF AT BCOLK DBS PKAUX-AKTS, PARIS TRANSLATED BY JOHN DURAND FIRST SERIES THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART THE IDEAL IN ART NEW YORK HENRY HOJT AND COMPANY CDPYUGHT, 1875, BY HENRY HOLT. THE PUBLISHER'S NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE growing appreciation of M. TAINE'S writ- ings gives the publishers the pleasure of issuing those now translated in a uniform edition. The lectures on art hitherto published sepa- rately in America consist of The Philosophy of Art, The Ideal in Art, Art in the Netherlands, and Art in Greece. The first two are now in- cluded in this volume, the last two together with the lecture on Art in Italy (not before published in America) are gathered into a volume uniform with this, as a second series. The two present volumes include all that M. TAINB has written OE distinctively Art topics. September, 1876. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE translation herewith presented to the reader consists of a course of Lectures delivered during the winter of 1864, before the students of Art of the Ecole dea Beaux Arts at Paris, by H. TAINE, Professeur d" Esthetique et cT JERstoire de VArt in that institution. These lectures, as a system of ^Esthetics, con- sist of an application of the experimental method to art, in the same manner as it is applied to the sciences. Whatever utility the system possesses is due to this principle. The author undertakes to explain art by social influences and othet causes; humanity at different times and places, climate, and other conditions, furnish the facts on which the theory rests. The artistic development of any age or people is made intelligible through a series of historical inductions terminating in a few inferential laws, constituting what the title of the book declares it to be ike philosophy of art 12 PREFACE. Such a system seems to possess many advan- tages. Among others, it tends to emancipate the student of art, as well as the amateur, from met- aphysical and visionary theories growing out of false theories and traditional misconceptions ; he is not misled by an exclusive adherence to partic- ular schools, masters, or epochs. It also tends to render criticism less capricious, and therefore less injurious ; dictating no conventional standard of judgment, it promotes a spirit of charity to- wards all works. As there is no attempt to do more than explain art according to natural laws, the reader must judge whether, like all systems assuming to bring order out of confusion, this one fulfills its mission. Readers familiar with M. TAINE'S able and orig- inal work on English literature (Histoire de la Lit- terature Anglaise) will recognize in the following pages the same theory applied to arts as is therein applied to literature. J. D. LONDON, November 9, 1865. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. SINCE the publication of the first edition of the "Philosophy of Art" seven years ago, in London, its author has become deservedly popular, and especially in this country. His writings are sought for, read and translated both in England and on the continent of Europe, and it would be but refining gold to say aught in his praise. Like every man of genius he has, as time moves on, improved in his order of thought and in his won- derfully artistic style. His latest work, " On In- telligence" ranks him as high among thinkers, as his former works among men of letters. The present edition is a careful revision of the former one, and amounts, indeed, to a new trans- lation. Were either to be compared with the original, no change of sense could probably be detected. The present edition, however, being 14 PREFACE. much more literal, the translator considers it an improvement, and hopes that it will be found more worthy of its gifted author, the publishers, his indulgent critics, and the public generally. J.D. SOUTH ORANGE, N. J., January, 1873. SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. PART L ON THE NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART II. MOB Object of this study The method employed The search for aggregates on which the work of art depends. First aggregate, the entire production of the artist Second aggregate, the school to which he belongs; ex- amples, Shakespeare, Rubens. Third aggregate, contem- porary society; examples, Greece, Spain, in the sixteenth century. Conditions determining appearance and character of work* of art; examples, Greek tragedy, Gothic architecture, Dutch painting, French tragedy Comparison of climate and natural productions with a moral temperature, and its effect Appli- cation of this method to Italian art. Objects and method of aesthetics Opposition of the his- toric and dogmatic methods Laws Sympathy for all schools The analogy between aesthetics and botany, and between the natural and the moral sciences . . tj What is the object of art The research experimental 16 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. PAG* uul not ideal Comparisons and eliminations of works of art sufficient. Division of the arts into two groups On the one hand, painting, sculpture and poesy; and, on the other, archi- tecture and music. First group Imitation apparently the end of art Reason for this derived from ordinary experi- ence, and from the lives of great men; Michael Angelo, Corneille Reasons derived from the history of art and literature ; Pompeii and Ravenna Classic style under Louis XIV., and academic style under Louis XV. 40 III. Exact imitation not the end of art Illustrations derived from casting, photography, and stenography Comparison between Denner and Van Dyck Certain arts purposely in- exact Comparison between antique statues and draped figures in the churches of Naples and Spain Comparison between prose and verse The two Iphigenias of Goethe . 51 iv. Relationships of parts the true object of imitation Illus- trations derived from drawing and literature . - 56 v. A work of art not confined to imitating relationships of parts Modification of the principle in the greatest schools ; Michael Angelo, Rubens The Medici Tomb The "Kerm- esse." Definition of essential character: examples of the lion and the Netherlands. Importance of essential character ; nature imperfectly ex- pressing it, art supplies her place Flanders in the time of Rubens, and Italy in the time of Raphael. Artistic imagination Spontaneous impressions, and thdr power of transformation. STNOP8I3 OF CONTENTS. If MOB. Retrospect ; successive steps of the method, and defini- tion of a work of art . . . . -60 VI. Two parts in this definition How music and architect- ore enter into it Opposition of the first and second group of arts The first copies organic and moral dependencies ; the second combines mathematical dependencies. Mathematical relationships perceived by the sense of sight Different classes of these relationships Principle of architecture. Mathematical relationships perceived by the sense of hearing Different classes of these relationships Principle of music The second principle of music, analogy of the sound and the cry Music, on this side, enters into the first group of arts. The definition given is applicable to all the arts . . 77 VII. The value of art in human life Selfish acts for the preservation of the individual Social acts tending to pre- serve the species Disinterested acts having for object the contemplation of causes and essentials Two ways for attain- ing this end: Science and art Advantages of art . . 8* PART IL ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. I- Genend law foi the production of the work of 18 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. PACHI First formula Two sorts of proof, one of experience, and the other of reasoning . ... 8} II. General exposition of the action of social mediums The development of the plant compared with the development of human activity Natural selection . .89 III. The action of a moral temperature The influence of melancholy and cheerful states of mind The artist is sad- dened by his personal share of misfortune By the melan- choly ideas of his contemporaries By his aptitude for defining the salient character of objects, which here is sad- ness He finds suggestions and enlightenment only in mel- ancholy subjects The public comprehends only melancholy subjects. An inverse case, state of prosperity and general joy In- termediate cases . . ... 95 IV. Real and historical cases Four epochs, and four leading arts . 105 V. Greek civilization and antique sculpture Comparison of Greek manners with those of contemporaries The city The citizen Taste for war The athlete Spartan educa- tion The gymnasium in other parts of Greece. Conformity of customs with ideas Nudity Olympic games The gods perfect human figures. Birth of sculpture; statues of athletes and of gods \Vhy statuary sufficed for the artist's conceptions Immense number of statues IO6 SYNOPSIS OF OONTENTB. jg 5 VI Mft The civilization of the middle ages, and Gothic architect- are. Decline of antique society Invasions of barbarians Feudal excesses Universal misery. Distaste for life Exalted sensibility The passion of lore Power of the Christian religion. Birth of Gothic architecture The cathedral Universality of Gothic architecture . . . . .122 VIL French civilization in the seventeenth century, and classic tragedy. The courtier Ruling taste Tragedy The aristocratic sentiments of society Importation of French tragedy into other European countries . . . . . 135 VIII. Contemporary civilization and music The French Rev- olution Effect of civil equality, machinery, and the com- forts of existence Decay of traditional authority. The representative man Development of music Its origin in Germany and Italy; and its dependence on mod- ern sentiments. Universality of music ..... 147 $ IX. The law of the production of works of art The fbtn terms of the series Practical application of the law to a study of all the arts and of every literature . . 157 Application of the law to the present The social medium renewing itself constantly, art renews itself Hopes for the future . .161 ON THE NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART GENTLEMEN : In commencing this course of lectures I wish to ask you two things of which I stand in great need: in the first place, your attention; after- wards, and especially, your kind indulgence. The warmth of your reception persuades me that you will favor me with both. Let me sincerely and earnestly thank you beforehand. The sub- ject with which I intend to entertain you this year is the history of art, and, principally, the history of painting in Italy. Before entering on the subject itself, I desire to indicate to you ita spirit and method. 1 The principal point of this method consists IE recognizing that a work of art is not isolated, and, consequently, that it is necessary to study the conditions out of which it proceeds and by which it is explained. The first step is not difficult. At first, and evidently, a work of art a picture, a tragedy, a statue belongs to a certain whole, that is to say, to the entire work of the artist producing it. This is elementary. It is well known that the different works of an artist bear a family likeness, like the children of one parent; that is to say, they bear a certain resemblance to each other. We know that every artist has his own style, a style recognized in all his productions. If he is a painter, he has his own coloring, rich or im- poverished ; his favorite types, noble or ignoble ; his attitudes, his mode of composition, even his 24: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. processes of execution; his favorite pigments, tints, models, and manner of working. If he is a writer, he has his own characters, calm or passionate ; his own plots, simple or complex ; his own denouments, comic or tragic, his pecul- iarities of style, his pet periods, and even his special vocabulary. This is so true, that a con- noisseur, if you place him before a work not signed by any prominent master, is able to recog- nize, to almost a certainty, to what artist this work belongs, and, if sufficiently experienced and delicate in his perceptions, the period of the art- ist's life, and the particular stage of his develop- ment. This is the first whole to which we must refer a work of art. And here is the second. The artist himself, considered in connection with his productions, is not isolated ; he also belongs to a whole, one greater than himself, comprising the school or family of artists of the time and country to which he belongs. For example, around Shakespeare, who, at the first glance, seems to be a marvelous celestial gift coming like an aerolite NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 25 from heaven, we find several dramatists of a nigh order- -Webster, Ford, Massinger, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Beaumout and Fletcher all of whom wrote in the same style and in the same spirit as he did. There are the same characters in their dramas as in Shakespeare's, the same violent and terrible characters, the same murderous and un foreseen occurrences, the same sudden and fren- zied passions, the same irregular, capricious, turgid, magnificent style, the same exquisite po- etic feeling for rural life and landscape, and the same delicate, tender, affectionate ideals of wo- man. In a similar way Rubens is to be judged. Ru- bens apparently stands alone, without either pred- ecessor or successor. On going to Belgium, however, and visiting the churches of Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, or Antwerp, you find a group of painters with genius resembling his. First, there is Grayer, in his day considered a rival ; Seghers, Van Oost, Everdingen, Van Thulden, Quellin, Hondthorst, and others, with whom you are familiar, Jordaens, Van Dyck all conceiving 3 20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. painting in the same spirit, and with many dis- tinctive features, all preserving a family likeness. Like Eubens, these artists delighted in painting ruddy and healthy flesh, the rich and quivering palpitation of life, the fresh and sensuous pulp which is diffused so richly over the surface of the living being, the real, and often brutal types, the transport and abandonment of unfettered action, the splendid lustrous and embroidered draperies, the varying hues of silk and purple, and the dis- play of shifting and waving folds. At the present day they seem to be obscured by the glory of their great contemporary; but it is not the less true that to comprehend him it is necessary to study him amidst this cluster of brilliants of which he is the brightest gem this family of artists, of which he is the most illustrious representative. This being the second step, there now remains the third. This family of artists is itself compre- hended in another whole more vast, which is the world surrounding it, and whose taste is similar. .The social and intellectual condition is the same for the public as for artists; they are not isolated NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 2? men ; it is their voice alone that we hear at this moment, through the space of centuries, but, be- neath this living voice which comes vibrating to us, we distinguish a murmur, and, as it were, a vast, low sound, the great infinite and varied voice of the people, chanting in unison with them. They have been great through this harmony, and it is very necessary that it should ever be so. Phidias and Ictinus, the constructors of the Parthenon and of the Olympian Jupiter, were, like other Athenians, pagans and free citizens, brought up in the palaestra, exercising and wrest- ling naked, and accustomed to deliberate and vote in the public assemblies ; possessing the same habits, the same interests, the same ideas, the same faith; men of the same race, the same edu- cation, the same language ; so that in all the im- portant acts of their life they are found in har- mony with their spectators. This harmony becomes still more apparent if we consider an age nearer our own. For exam- ple, take the great Spanish epoch of the sixteenth and a part of the seventeenth centuries, in which 2 g TEL PHILOSOPHY OF ART. lived the great painters, Velasquez, Murillo, Zui baran, Francisco de Herrera, Alonzo Cano, and Morales; and the great poets, Lope de Yega, Calderon, Cervantes, Tirso de Molina, Don Luis de Leon, Guilhem de Castro, and so many others. You know that at this time Spain was entirely monarchical and Catholic ; that she had overcome the Turks at Lepanto ; that she planted her foot in Africa and maintained herself there ; that she combated the Protestants in Germany, pursued them in France and attacked them in England ; that she subdued and converted the idolaters of the new world, and chased away Jews and Moors from her own soil ; that she purged her own faith with auto-da-fes and persecutions ; that she lav- ished fleets and armies, and the gold and silver of her American possessions, along with her most precious children, the vital blood of her own heart, upon multiplied and boundless cru- sades, so obstinately and so fanatically, that at the end of a century and a half she fell pros- trate at the feet of Europe, but with such enthu siasin, such a burst of glory, such national fervor t NATURE OF THE WORK OF AR'L 29 that her subjects, enamored of the monarch} in which their power was concentrated, and with the cause to which they devoted their lives, felt no other desire than that of elevating religion and royalty by their obedience, and of forming around the Church and the Throne a choir of faithful, militant, and adoring supporters. In this mon- archy of crusaders and inquisitors, preserving the chivalric sentiments and sombre passions, the ferocity, intolerance, and mysticism of the middle ages, the greatest artists are the very men who possessed in the highest degree the faculties, sen- timents, and passions of the public that sur- rounded them. The most celebrated poets Lope de Vega and Calderon were military ad- venturers, volunteers in the Armada, duelists and lovers, as exalted and as mystic in love as the poets and Don Quixotes of feudal times; they were passionate Catholics and so ardent that, at the end of their lives, one became a familiar of the Inquisition, others became priests, and the most illustrious among them the great Lope de Vega fainted on saying Mass, at the thought of 30 the sacrifice and martyrdom of Jesus. Every- where may be found similar examples of the alii* ance, the intimate harmony existing between an artist and his contemporaries; and we may rest assured that if we desire to comprehend the taste or the genius of an artist, the reasons leading bJTii to choose a particular style of painting 01 drama, to prefer this or that character or color- ing, and to represent particular sentiments, we must seek for them in the social and intellectual conditions of the community in the midst.o|,.wlyic^_ he lived. We have therefore to lay down this rule : that, in order to comprehend a work of art, an artist or a group of artists, we must clearly comprehend the general social and intellectual condition of the times to which they belong. Herein is to be found the final explanation; herein resides the primitive cause determining all that follows it. This truth, gentlemen, is confirmed by experience. In short, if we pass in review the principal epochs of the history of art, we find that the arts appear and disappear along with certain accompanying NATURE OF THE WORK OP ART. 3] social and intellectual conditions. For example, the Greek tragedy that of ./Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides appears at the time when the the Greeks were victorious over the Persians ; at the heroic era of small republican cities, at the moment of the great struggle by which they ac- quired their independence and established their ascendency in the civilized world ; and we see it disappearing along with this independence and this vigor when a degeneracy of character and the Macedonian conquest delivered Greece over to strangers. It is the same with Gothic architec- ture, developing along with the definitive estab- lishment of feudalism in the semi-renaissance of the eleventh century at the period when society, delivered from brigands and Normans, began to consolidate, and disappearing at the period when the military system of petty independent barons, with the manners and customs growing out of it vanished near the end of the fifteenth century, on the advent of modern monarchies. It is the same with Dutch painting, which flourished at the glo- rious period when, through firmness and courage, 32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. Holland succeeded in freeing herself from Span ish rule, combated England with equal power, and became the richest, freest, most industrious, and most prosperous state in Europe : and we see it declining at the commencement of the eighteenth century, when Holland, fallen into a secondary rank, leaves the first to England, reducing itself to a well-ordered, safely-administered, quiet, com- mercial banking-house, in which man, an honest bourgeois, could live at ease, exempt from every great ambition and every grand emotion. It is the same, finally, with French tragedy appearing at the period when a noble and well-regulated monarchy, under Louis XIV., established the em- pire of decorum, the life of the court, "the pomp and circumstance" of society, and the elegant do- mestic phrases of aristocracy ; disappearing when the social rule of nobles and the manners of the ante-chamber were abolished by the Revolution. I would like to make you more sensible by a comparison of this effect of the social and intfl- lectual state on the Fine Arts. Suppose you are leaving the land of the south for that of the north NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 33 yon perceive on entering a certain zone a partic- ular mode of cultivation and a particular species of plant : first come the aloe and the orange ; a little later, the viiio and the olive ; after these, the oak and the chestnut ; a little further on, oats and the pine, and finally, mosses and lichens. Each zone has its own mode of cultivation and peculiar vegetation ; both begin at the commencement, and both finish at the end of the zone ; both are at- tached to it. The zone is the condition of their existence ; by its presence or its absence is deter- mined what shall appear and what shall disap- pear. Now, what is this zone but a certain tem- perature ; in other words, a certain degree of heat and moisture ; in short, a certain number of governing circumstances analogous in its germ to that which we called a moment ago the social and intellectual state ? Just as there is a physical temperature, which by its variations determines the appearance of this or that species of plant, so is there a moral temperature, which by its variations determines the appearance of this or that species of art. And 34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. as we study the physical temperature in order tc comprehend the advent of this or that species of plants, whether maize or oats, the orange or the pine, so is it necessary to study the moral temper- ature in order to comprehend the advent of vari- ous phases of art, whether pagan sculpture or realistic painting, mystic architecture or classic literature, voluptuous music or ideal poetry. The productions of the human mind, like those of ani- mated nature, can only be explained by their milieu. Hence the study 1 intend to offer to you this season, of the history of painting in Italy. I shall attempt to lay before your eyes the mystic milieu, in which appeared Giotto and Beato Angelico, and to this end I shall read passages from the poets and legendary writers, containing the ideas entertained by the men of those days concerning happiness, misery, love, faith, paradise, hell, and all the great interests of humanity. We shall find documentary evidence in the poetry of Dante of Guido Cavalcanti, of the Franciscans, in the Golden Legend, in the Imitation of Jesus Christ NATURE OP THE WORK OF ART. 35 in the Fioretti of St. Francis, in the works of his- torians like Diiio Oampagni, and in that vast col- lection of chroniclers by Muratori, which so naively portray the jealousies and disturbances of the small Italian republics. After this I shall attempt to place before you in the same manner the pagan milieu which a century and a half later produced Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael and Titian, and to this end I shall read, either from the memoirs of contemporaries Ben- venuto Cellini for instance or from the diverse chronicles kept daily in Home and in the princi- pal Italian cities, or from the dispatches of ambas- sadors, or, finally, from the descriptions of fetes, masquerades, and civic receptions, which are re- markable fragments, displaying the brutality, sen- suality, and vigor of society, as well as the lively poetic sentiment, the love of the picturesque, the great literary sentiment, the decorative instincts, and the passion for external splendor which at that time are seen as well among the people and the ignorant crDwd as among the great and the lettered. 56 THE PHIL SOPHY OF AM T. Suppose now, gentlemen, we should succeed in this undertaking, and that we should be able to mark clearly and precisely the various intellectual conditions which have led to the birth of Italian painting its development, its bloom, its varie- ties and decline. Suppose the same undertaking successful with other countries, and other ages, and with the different branches of art, architec- ture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. Sup- pose, that through the effect of all these discover- ies, we succeed in defining the nature, and in marking the conditions of existence of each art, we shall then have a complete explanation of the Fine Arts, and of art in general ; that is to say, a philosophy of the Fine Arts what is called an (Esthetic system. This is what we aim at, gentle- men, and nothing else. Ours is modern, and dif- fers from the ancient, inasmuch as it is historic, and not dogmatic ; that is to say, it imposes no precepts, but ascertains and verifies laws. An- cient aesthetics gave, at first, a definition of beauty, and declared, for instance, thai the beau- tiful is the expression of the moral ideal, 01 DtATUliK OF THE WORK OF AMT. JJ? rather is the expression of the in-visible, or rather still, is the expression of the human pas sions ; then starting hence, as from an article of a code, they absolved, condemned, admonished, and directed. It is my good fortune not to have such a formidable task to meet. I do not wish to guide you it would embarrass me too much. Besides, I say with all humility, that, as to pre- cepts, we have as yet found but two : the first is to be born a genius, an affair of your parents, and not mine; and the second, which implies much labor in order to master art, which like- wise does not depend on me, but on yourselves. My sole duty is to offer you facts, and show yon how these facts are produced. The modern method, which I strive to pursue, and which is beginning to be introduced in all the moral sci- ences, consists in considering human productions, and particularly works of art, as facts and pro- ductions of which it is essential to mark the characteristics and seek the causes, and nothing more. Thus understood, science neither pardons nor proscribes ; it verifies and explains. It doep 4 38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. not say to you, despise Dutch art because it is vulgar, and prize only Italian art ; nor does it say to you despise Gothic art because it is mor- bid, and prize only Greek art. It leaves every one free to follow their own predilections, to prefer that which is germane to one's temper- ament, and to study with the greatest care that which best corresponds to the development of one's own mind. Science has sympathies for all the forms of art, and for all schools, even for those the most opposed to each other. It ac- cepts them as so many manifestations of the hu- man mind, judging that the more numerous they are, and the more antithetical, the more they show the human mind in its innumerable and novel phases. It is analogous to botany, which studies the orange, the laurel, the pine, and the birch, with equal interest; it is itself a species of botany, applied not to plants, but to the works of man. By virtue of this it keeps pace with the general movement of the day, which now affiliates the moral sciences with the natural sciences, and which, giving to the first the principles, precau- NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 39 tions, and directions of the second, gives to them the same stability, and assures them the same progress. n. I WISH to apply at once this method to the first and principal question by which a course of aesthetics is opened out, and which is a definition of art. What is art, and in what does its nature consist? Instead of establishing a formula, I wish to familiarize you with facts, for facts exist here as elsewhere positive facts open to obser- vation ; I mean works of art arranged by families in galleries and libraries, like plants in an herb- arium, and animals in a museum. Analysis may be applied to the one as to the others ; a work of art may be investigated generally, as we investigate a plant or an animal generally. There is no more need of discarding experience in the first case than in the second ; the entire process consists in discovering, by numerous comparisons and progressive eliminations, traits common to all works of art, and, at the same tune, the dis- tinctive traits by which works of art fire separa- NATURE OF TIIE WORK OF ART. 41 ted from other productions of tho human irtel lect To this end we will, among the five great arts of poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, and music, set aside the last two, of which the ex- planation is more difficult, and to which we will return afterwards ; we shall at present consider only the first three. AH, as you are aware, pos- sess a common character, that of being more or less imitative arts. At the first glance, it seems that this is their principal character, and their object is imitation as exact as possible. For it is plain that a statue is meant to imitate accurately a really living man ; that a picture is intended to portray real persons in real attitudes, the interior of a house and a landscape, such as nature presents. It is no less evident that a drama, a romance, attempts to represent faithfully characters, actions, and actual speech, and to give as precise and as ac- curate a picture of them as is possible. When, accordingly, the image is inadequate or inexact, we say to the sculptor, "This breast or this limb 42 TEE PHILC80PHY OF ART. is not well executed ;" and to the painter. "The figures of your background are too large the coloring of your trees is faulty ;'* and we say to the author, "Never did man feel or think as you have imagined him." But there are other proofs, still stronger, and first, every-day experience. When we behold what takes place in the life of an artist, we per- ceive that it is generally divided into two sec- tions. During the first, hi the youth and maturity of his talent, he sees tilings as they are, and studies them minutely and earnestly; he fixes his eyes on them ; he labors and worries to express them, and he expresses them with more than scrupulous fidelity. Arriving at a certain mo- ment of lif e, he thinks he understands them thor- oughly and discovers no more novelty in them ; he casts aside the living model, and with certain prescribed rules which he has picked up in the course of his experience he forms a drama or a romance, a picture or a statue. The first epoch is that of natural feeling; the second that of man- nerism and decline. If we penetrate the lives of MATURE OF THE WORK OP ART. 43 the greatest men, we rarely fail to discover both. In the life of Michael Angelo, the first period lasted a long time, a little less than sixty years; all the works belonging to it disclose the senti- ment of force and heroic grandeur. The artist is imbued with it; he has no other thought. His numerous dissections, his countless drawings, the urn-emitted analysis of his own heart, his study of the tragic passions and of their physical expres- sion, are for him but the means of manifesting outwardly the militant energy with which he is carried away. This idea descends upon you from every corner of the great vault of the Sistine chapel. Enter the Pauline chapel alongside of it, and contemplate the works of his old age the Conversion of St. Paul, the Crucifixion of Si Peter; consider even the Last Judgment, which he painted in his seventy-seventh year. Connois- seurs, and those who are not, recognize at once that the two frescoes are executed according to prescribed rules ; that an artist possessed a cer- tain number of forms, which he used convention- ally ; that he multiplied extraordinary attitudes, 4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. and ingeniously contrived foreshorteniiigs ; tliat the lively invention, naturalness, the great trans- port of the heart, the perfect truth peculiar to his first works, have, at least in part, disappeared from the abuse of technique and the force of routine ; and that if he is still superiorto others, he is greatly jboferior to himself.... The same comment may be made on another life that of our French Michael Angelo, Cor- neille. In the first years of his life, Corneille was likewise struck by the feeling of force, and of moral heroism. He found it around him in the vigorous passions bequeathed by the religious wars to the new monarchy ; in the daring acts of duelists; in the proud feeling of honor which still carried away the devotees of feudalism; in the bloody tragedies which the plots of princes and the executions of Richelieu furnished as spec- tacles for the court ; and he created personages like Chimene and the Cid, like Pdyeude and Pauline, like Cornelie, Sertoritis, J^mUie, and les Horaces. Afterwards he produced Pertkarite, At- &Za, and other feeble works, in which the situations NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 45 merge into the horrible, and generous emotions lose themselves in extravagance. In this period the living models he once contemplated no longer had a social setting ; at least he no longer sought them, he failed to renew his inspiration. He was governed by prescribed rules due to the memory of processes which he had formerly found in the heat of enthusiasm, literary theories, dissertations and distinctions on theatrical catastrophes and dramatic licenses. He copied and exaggerated himself; learning, calculation and routine shut out from him the direct and personal contempla- tion of powerful emotions and of noble actions; he no longer created, bui mjmufa^jnarad* It is not alone the history of this or that great man which proves to us the necessity of imitating the living model, and of keeping the eye fixed on nature, but rather the history of every great school of art. Every school (I believe without excep- tion) degenerates and falls, simply through its neglect of exact imitation, and its abandonment of the living model. You see it in painting, in the fabricators of muscles and exaggerated 4(5 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. who succeeded Michael Angelo ; in the sciolists of theatrical decorations and in the brawny ro- tundities which have followed the great Vene- tians ; and in the great boudoir and alcove paint- ers which closed the French school of art of the eighteenth century. The same thing occurs in literature, with the versifiers and rhetoricians of the Latin decadence ; with the sensual and de- clamatory playwrights closing the bright periods of the English drama, and with the manufacturers of sonnets, puns, witticisms, and bombast of the Italian decline. Among these I will cite two striking examples. The first is the decline of sculpture and painting in antiquity, of which you obtain a vivid impression by visiting Pompeii, and afterwards Ravenna. At Pompeii the paint- ing and sculpture belong to the first century of the present era ; at Eavenna the mosaics are of the sixth century, about the times of the Emperor Justinian. In this interval of five centuries art becomes irremediably corrupt, and its degeneracy is wholly due to the neglect of the living model. In the first century the pagan manners and tastes NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 47 of the pakestra still existed. Men wore their vest- ments loose and cast them off easily, frequented the baths, exercised in a state of nudity, witnessed the combats of the circus, ever contemplating sympathetically and intelligently the active move- ments of the living body. Their sculptors and painters, surrounded by nude and half-nude forms, were capable of reproducing them. Ac- cordingly, you will see on the walls of Pompeii, in the little oratories and in the inner courts, beau- tiful dancing females, spirited, supple young he- roes, with manly chests, agile feet, every posture and form of the body rendered with an ease and accuracy to which the most elaborate study of the present day cannot attain. During the following five hundred years everything gradually changes. Pagan manners, the use of the palaestra, and the love of the nude, disappear. The body is no longer exposed, but concealed under compli- cated drapery, and under a display of lace, pur- ple, and oriental magnificence. People no longer esteem the wrestler and the youthful gymnast,* |8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. but the eunuch, the scribe, the monk, and the woman. Asceticism gains ground, and with it a love for listless reverie, nollow disputation, scrib- bling and wrangling. The worn-out babblers of the Lower Empire replace the valiant Greek ath- letes and the hardy combatants of Rome. By de- grees the knowledge and study of the living model are interdicted. People have discarded it. Their eyes rest only on the works of ancient masters, and they copy these. Soon copies are only made of copies, and again copies of these, so that each generation recedes a step from the original type. The artist ceases to have his own idea and his own feeling, and becomes a copying machine. The Fathers declare that he must invent nothing, but must adhere to lineaments prescribed by tra- dition and sanctioned by authority. This sepa- ration of the artist from the living model brings art to the condition in which you see it at Ba venna. At the end of five centuries, artists can only represent man in two ways seated and standing; other attitudes are too difficult, and are beyond their capacity. Hands and feet ap NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 49 pear rigid as if fractured, the folds of drapery are wooden, figures seem to be manikins, and heads are invaded by the eyes. Art is like an invalid sinking under a mortal consumption; it is lan- guishing, and about to expire. In a different branch of art amongst ourselves, and in a neighboring century, we find again a sim- ilar decline, and brought about by similar causes. In the age of Louis XTV., literature attained to a perfect style, to a purity, to a precision, to a so- briety of which we have no example; dramatic art, especially, created a language and a style of versification deemed by all Europe a masterpiece of the human intellect. This is due to the fact of writers finding their models around them and constantly observing them. The language of Louis XIV. was perfect, displaying a dignity, elo- quence, and gravity truly royal. We know by the letters, dispatches, and memoirs of the court personages of that time, that an aristocratic tone, sustained elegance, propriety of terms, dignified manners, and the art of correct speaking, were as common to courtiers as to monarch ; so that the 5 50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. writer frequenting their society, had but to draw on his memory and experience in order to obtain the very best materials of his art m. Is this true in every particular, and must we conclude that absolutely exact imitation is the end of art ? If this were so, gentlemen, absolutely exact imitation would produce the finest works. But, in fact, it is not so. In sculpture, for instance, casting is the process by which a faithful and minute impression of a model is obtained, and certainly a good cast is not equal to a good statue. Again, and in another domain, photog- raphy is the art which completely reproduces with lines and tints on a flat surface, without possible mistake, the forms and modeling of the object imitated. Photography is undoubtedly a useful auxiliary to painting, and is sometimes tastefulh employed by cultivated and intelligent men ; but after all, no one thinks of comparing it with painting. And finally, as a last illustration, if it were true that exact imitation is the supreme 52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. aim of art, let me ask what would be the besi tragedy? the best comedy? the best drama ? A stenographic report of a criminal trial, every word of which is faithfully recorded. It is clear, however, that if we sometimes encounter in it flashes of nature and occasional outbursts of sentiment, these are but veins of pure metal in a mass of worthless dross ; it may furnish a writer with materials for his art, but it does not con- stitute a work of art Some may possibly say, that photography, casting, and stenography are mechanical proc- esses, and that we ought to leave mechanism out of the question, and accordingly limit our comparisons to man's work. Let us, therefore, select works by artists conspicuous for minute fidelity. There is a canvas in the Louvre by Denner. This artist worked microscopically, taking four years to finish a portrait. Nothing in his heads is overlooked the finest lines and wrinkles, the faintly mottled surface of the cheeks, the black specks scattered over the nose, the bluish flush of imperceptible veins meander- SATURE OP THE WORK OF ART. $ ing under the skin, nor the reflection of objects in the vicinity on the eye. We are struck with astonishment. This head is a perfect illusion; it seems to project out of the frame. Such suc- cess and such patience are unparalleled. Sub Btantially, however, a broad sketch by Van Dyck is a hundredfold more powerful. Beside, neither in painting nor in any other art are prizes awarded to deceptions. A second and stronger proof, that exact imita- tion is not the end of art, is to be found in this fact, that certain arts are purposely inexact. There is sculpture, for instance. A stattie is generally of one color, either of bronze or of marble; and again, the eyes are without eye- balls. It is just tliia uniformity of tint, and this modification of moral expression, which com- pletes its beauty. Examine corresponding works, in which imitation is pushed to extremity. The churches of Naples and Spain contain draped statues, colored ; saints in actual monastic garb, with yellow earthy skins, suitable to ascetics, and bleeding hands and wounded sides characteristic 54 TBS PHILOSOPHY OF Alii of the martyred. Alongside of these appeal madonnas, in royal robes, in festive dresses, and in bright silks, crowned with diadems, wearing precious necklaces, brilliant ribbons, and mag- nificent laces, and with rosy complexions, glitter- ing eyes, and eyeballs formed of carbuncles. By this excess of literal imitation, the artist gives no pleasure, but repugnance, often disgust, and sometimes horror. It is the same in literature. The best half of dramatic poetry, every classic Greek and French drama, and the greater part of Spanish and Eng- lish dramas, far from literally copying ordinary conversation, intentionally modify human speech. Each of these dramatic poets makes his charac- ters speak in verse, casting their dialogue in rhythm, and often in rhyme. Is this modifica- tion prejudicial to the work ? Far from it. One of the great works of the age, the "Iphigenia" of Goethe, which was at first written in prose and afterwards re-written in verse, affords abundant evidence of this. It is beautiful in prose, but in verse what a difference! The modification of JfATUliS OF TEE WORK OF ART. 55 ordinary language, in the introduction of rhythm and metre, evidently gives to this work its in- comparable accent, that calm sublimity, that broad, sustained tragic tone, which elevates the spirit above the low level of common life, and brings before the eye the heroes of ancient days that lost race of primitive souls and, among them, the august virgin, interpreter of the gods, custodian of the laws, and the benefactress of mankind, in whom is concentrated whatever is noble and good in human nature, in order to glorify our species and renew the inspiration of our hearts. IV. IT is essential, then, to closely imitate some- thing in an object j bat not everything. We have now to discover what imitation should be applied to. Anticipating an answer to this, I reply, "To f 11 the relationships and mutual dependence of parts." Excuse this abstract definition I will make my meaning clearer to you. Imagine yourselves before a living model, man or woman, with a pencil, and a piece of paper twice the dimensions of your hand, on which to copy it. Certainly, vou cannot be. expQcted.,.iQ M reproduce the magnitude of the limbs, for your - : -,^..><-*, v mT*v'"?:.'N' T ''fl'*fl-'*^<"^'o. i i^<-r"'-" ! *"" 'Mwi'v^ *f-.-**r*i ** 'ir^* i , , j , ***** paper is too small; nor^can vou be^expectgd,J.9 reproduce their color, for you have only black and white to work wjth^ What vou have to do is to reproduce their rdaiionsMps+.QJidi first the pro- w*nwu**flt>* wi -* v * 1 ^'" 1 " v " v portions, that is to say, the relationships of mag- nitude. If the head is of a certain length, the body must be so many times longer than the NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 57 head, the arm of a length equally dependent on that, and the leg the same ; and so on with the other members. Again, you are required to re- produce forms, or the relationships of position: this or that curve, oval, angle, or sinuosity in the model must be repeated in the copy by a line of the same nature. In short, your object is to re- produce the aggregate of relationships, by which tho parts are linked together and nothing else; it is not the simple corporeal appearance that you have to give, but the logic of the whole body. Suppose, in like manner, you are contemplating some actual character, some scene in real life, high or low, and you are asked to furnish a de- scription of it. To do this you have your eyes, your ears, your memory, and, perhaps, a pencil, to dot down five or six notes no great means, bnt ample for your purpose. What is expected of you is, not to record every word and motion, all the actions of the personage, or of the fifteen or twenty persons that are figured before you, but, as before, to note proportions, connections, and relationships ; you are expected, in the first 58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. place, to keep exactly the proportion of the ac- tions of the personage, in other words, to give prominence to amBitious acts, If lie is ambitious, t"avaiTci6us acls| If TKe TenTfact's, if he is violent ; after this, to observe^ the reciprocal connection of these same acts ; that is "to say, to provoke one reply by another, to originate a resolution, a sentiment, an idea by an idea, a sentiment, a preceding resolution, and moreover by the actual condition of the person- age; in addition to that, still by the general character bestowed on him. In short, in the lit- 6T&1*V GllOIuj 8)S 1TI LilG T31CTO1*1<11 OJXOrtJj It IS IDTpOlV tant to transcribe, not the visible outlines of per- sons and events, but the aggregate of their rela- tionships and inter-dependencies, Jfoatjsjbo say, theirlojjie. As a general rule, therefore, whatever interests us in a real personage, and which we entreat the artist to extract and render, is his outward or in- ward logic ; in other terms, his structure, compo- sition and action. We have here, as you perceive, corrected tba NATURE OF THE WORK OF AR7. 59 first definition given ; it is not canceled, but puri- fied. We have discovered a more elevated char- acter for art, which thus becomes intellectual, and not mechanical. V. DOES this suffice is? Do we find works of ar) simply confined to a reproduction of the relation- ships of parts? By no means, for the greatest schools are justly those in which actual relation- ships are most modified. Consider, for example, the Italian school in its greatest artist, Michael Angelo, and, in order to give precision to our ideas, let us recall his principal work, the four marble statues surmounting the tomb of the Medicis at Florence. Those of you who have not seen the originals, are at least familiar with cop- ies of them. In the figures of these men, and especially in the reclining females, sleeping or waking, the proportions of the parts are certainly not the same as in real personages. Similar fig- ures exist nowhere, even in Italy. You will see there young, handsome, well-dressed men, peas- ants with bright eyes and a fierce expression, academy models with firm muscles and a proud NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. g] bearing ; but neither in a village nor at festivi- ties, nor in the studios of Italy or elsewhere, ai the present time or in the sixteenth century, does any real man or woman resemble the indignant heroes and the colossal despairing virgins which this great artist has placed before us in this funereal chapeL Michael Angelo found these types in his own genius and in his own heart. In order to pmafn them it waa^ necessary to have the soul of a recluse, of a meditative man, of a lover of justice; the soul of an impassioned and generous nature bewildered in the midst of ener- vated and corrupt beings, amidst treachery and oppression, before the inevitable triumph of tyranny and injustice, under the ruins of liberty and of nationality, himself threatened with death, feeling that if he lived it was only by favor, and perhaps only by a short respite, incapable of sycophancy and of submission, taking refuge en- tirely in that art by which, in the silence of serv- itude, his great heart and his great despair still spoke. He wrote on the pedestal of his sleeping statue, "Sleep is sweet, and yet more sweet is it 6 g2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. to be of stone, while saaine and misery last Fortunate am I not to see not to feel. Forbeai to aronse me! Ah! speak low!" This is the sentiment which revealed to him such forms. To express it, he has changed the ordinary proportions; he has lengthened the trunk and the limbs, twisted the torso upon the hips, hollowed out the sockets of the eyes, fur- rowed the forehead with wrinkles similar to the lion's frowning brow, raised mountains of muscles on the shoulder, ridged the spine with tendons, and so fastened the vertebrae that it resembles the links of an iron chain strained to their utmost tension and about to break Let us consider, in like manner, the Flemish school; and in this school the great Fleming, Kubens, and one of the most striking of his works, the "Kermesse." In this work, no more than in those of Michael Angelo, will you find an imitation of ordinary proportions. Yisit Flan- ders, and observe the types of mankind about you, even at feastings and revelings, such as the f&tes of Gayant, Antwerp, and other places. SATURB OF THE WOHK OF AR1. 63 You will see comfortable-looking people eating much and drinking more ; serenely smoking, coot phlegmatic bodies; dull-looking, and with mas- sive, irregular features, strongly resembling the figures of Teniers. As to the splendid brutes of the "Kermesse," you meet nothing like them! Bubens certainly found them elsewhere. After the horrible religious wars, this rich country of Flanders, so long devastated, finally attained peace and civil security. The soil is so good, and the people so prudent, comfort and prosper- ity returned almost at once. Everybody enjoyed this new prosperity and abundance ; the contrast between the past and the present led to the in- dulgence of rude and carnal instincts let loose like horses and cattle after long privation in fresh, green fields, abounding in the richest past- ure. Kubens himself was sensible of them ; and the poetry of gross, sumptuous living, of satisfied and redundant flesh, of brutal, inordinate merry- making, found a ready outlet in the shameless sensualities and voluptuous ruddiness, in the whiteness and freshness of the nudities of which 64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. he was so prodigal. In order to express all this in the "Kermesse" he has expanded the trunk; enlarged the thighs, twisted the loins, deepened the redness of the cheeks, disheveled the hair, kindled in the eyes a flame of savage, unbridled desire, unloosed the demons of disorder in the shape of shattered glasses, overturned tables, howlings and Mssings, a perfect orgie, and the most extraordinary culmination of human bes- tiality ever portrayed upon canvas. These two examples show you that the artist, in modifying the relationships of parts, modifies them understandingly, purposely, in such a way as to make apparent the essential character of the oT>ject, and consequently its leading idea accord- ing to his conception of it. This phrase, gentle- men, requires attention ; this essential character is what philosophers call the essence of things; and because of this they say that it is the aim of art to manifest the essence of things. "We will not retain this term essence, which is technical, but simply state that it is the aim of art to mani- fest a predominant character, some salient prin- NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 65 cipal quality, some important point of view, some essential condition of being in the object. We here approach the true definition of art, and accordingly need to be perfectly clear. We must insist on and precisely define essential character. I would premise at once that it is a ^^ Ji quality from which all others, or at least most other j qualities, are derived according to definite affinities. ^K v^Grant me again this abstract definition: a few illustrations will make it plain to you. ^ The essential character of a lion, giving him his rank in the classifications of natural history, is that of a great flesh-eater ; nearly all his traits, whether physical or moral, as I am about to prove to you, are derived from this trait as their i fountain-head. First, there are physical traits: ^A his teeth move like shears; he has a jaw con- j\ P structed to tear and to crush; and necessarily, ^y > for. being carnivorous, he has to nourish himself ^. S with, and prey upon, living game ; in order to . manoeuvre this formidable instrument he requires | *) enormous muscles, and for their insertion, tem- poral sockets of proportionate size. Add to the 66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. feet other instruments, the terrible contractile claws, the quick step on the extremity of the toes, a terrible elasticity of the thighs acting like a powerful spring, and eyes that see best ai night, because night is the best hunting-time. A naturalist, pointing to a lion's skeleton, once said to me, "There is a jaw mounted on foui^pawjj." The moral points of the lion are likewise in harmony. At first, there is the sanguinary in- stinct the craving for fresh flesh, and a repug- nance for every other food; next, the strength and the nervous excitement through which the lion concentrates an enormous amount of force at the instant of attack and defense ; and, on the other hand, his somniferous habits, the grave, sombre inertia of moments of repose, and the long yawnings after the excitement of the chase. All these traits are derived from his carnivorous character, and on this account we call it his essential character. Let us now consider a more difficult case, that of an entire country, with its innumerable details of structure, aspect, and cultivation; its plants, NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. $J animate, inhabitants, and towns ; as, for example, the Low Countries. The essential character oj[ this region is its alluvial formation; that is to say, a formation due to vast quantities of earth brought down by streams and deposited about their mouths. From this single term spring an infinity of peculiarities, summing up the entire ii i mr "- *-. - l( Mil 1r r ^ rt ^. T|n - ^g^ > ^^^ai^MMaaa^aiMiMtf>t nature of the country not only its physical out- lines, what it is in itself, but again the intellect- ual, moral, and physical qualities of its inhabit- ants, and of their works. At first, in the inani- mate world, come its moist and fertile plains, the necessary consequence of numerous broad rivers and vast deposits of productive soil. These plains are always green, because broad, tranquil, and sluggish streams, and the innumerable canals so easily constructed in soft, flat ground, main- tain perennial verdure. You can readily imagine, and on purely rational principles, the aspect of such a country a dull, rainy sky, constantly streaked with showers, and even on fine days veiled as if by gauze with light vapory clouds rising from the wet surface, forming a trans- 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMI, parent dome, an airy tissue of delicate, snowy fleeces, over the broad verdant expanse stretch- ing out of sight and rounded to the distant hori- zon. In the animated kingdom these numerous luxuriant pastures attract countless herds of cat- tle, who recline tranquilly on the grass, or rumi- nate over their cud, and dot the flat green sward with innumerable spots of white, yellow, and black. Hence the rich stores of milk and meat, which, added to the grains and vegetables raised I>n this prolific soil, furnish its inhabitants with cheap and abundant supplies of food. It might well be said that in this country water makes grass, grass makes cattle, cattle make cheese, butter, and meat ; and all these, with beer, make the inhabitant. Indeed, out of this fat living, and out of this physical organization saturated with moisture, spring the phlegmatic tempera- ment, the regular habits, the tranquil mind and nerves, the capacity to take life easily and pru- dently, unbroken contentment and love of well- being, and, consequently, the reign of cleanliness and the perfection of comfort. These conse- XAIURB OF THE WORK OF ART. fly quences extend so far as even to affect the aspect of towns. In an alluvial country there is nc stone; building material consists of terra-cotta, bricks, and tiles. Bains being frequent and heavy, roofs are very sloping, and as dampness lasts a long time, their fronts are painted and varnished. A Flemish town, therefore, is a net- work of brown or red edifices always neat, occa- sionally glittering and with pointed gables ; here and there rises an old church constructed of shingle or of rubble ; streets in the best of order run between two scrupulously clean lines of side- walk. In Holland the sidewalks are laid in brick, frequently intermingled with coarse porce- lain : domestics may be seen at an early hour in the morning on their knees cleaning them off with cloths. Cast your eyes through the dazzling window-panes; enter a club-room decked with green branches, with its floor powdered with sand constantly renewed; visit the taverns, brightly painted, where rows of casks display their brown rotund sides, and where tbe rich yellow beer foams up cut of glasses covered with 70 TEE PHILOSOPHY OF ABI quaint devices. In all these details of commoL life, in all these signs of inward contentment and enduring prosperity, you detect the effects of the great underlying characteristic which is stamped *^_ 1 v..,...,,..^,.,.i -x~-,~-^~._.,, OTt . ^^^.^"^"--"'"" upon the climate and the soil, upon the vegetable Krigcloiii and the animal kingdom, upon man and bis works, upon society and the individual^ _ Through these innumerable effects, you judge of the importance of this essential character. It is this which art must bring forward into proper light, and if this task devolves upon art, it is be- cause nature fails to accomplish it. In nature, this essential character is simply dominant ; it is \ iEe aim of art to render it predominant. It ^ l> _ - ^,-,-*<,.'!.'4.1>r%\L,T-ff5/ 1 ;".\--U->ft, ^f V moulds real objects, but it does not mould them completely : its action is restricted, impeded by the intervention of other causes ; its impression on objects bearing its stamp is not sufficiently strong to be clearly visible. Man is sensible of tills deficiency; and to remove it he has invented MtT Let us again take up Bubens* "Kermesse." These blooming merry wives, these roistering NATURE OF THE WORK Of ART. 71 drunkards, these busts and visages of burly on* bridled brutes, probably found counterparts in the carousals of the day. Over-nourished and exuberant nature aimed at producing such gross forms and such coarse manners, but she only half accomplished her task ; other causes inter- vened to stay this excess of a carnal, jovial energy. There is, at first, poverty. In the best of times, and in the best countries, many people have not enough to eat, and fasting, at least partial absti- nence, misery, and bad air, all the accompani ments of indigence, diminish the development and boisterousness of native brutality. A suffering man is not so strong, and more sober. Keligion, police regulations, and habits due to steady labor, operate in the same direction ; education does its part. Out of a hundred subjects who, under favorable conditions, might have furnished Ku- bens with models, only five or six, perhaps, could be of any service to him. Suppose now that these five or six figures in the actual festivities whici he might have seen were lost in a crowd of people more or less indifferent and common 72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AR'i consider again, that at the moment tncy under his eye they exhibited neither the attitude, the expression, the gestures, the abandonment the costume, or the disorder requisite to make this teeming excitement apparent. Through all these drawbacks nature called art to its aid ; she could not clearly distinguish the character; it was necessary that the artist should supplement her. Thus is it with every superior work of art. While Raphael was painting his "Galatea," he wrote that, beautiful women being scarce, he was following a conception of his own. This means that, looking at human nature from a certain point of view, its repose, its felicity, its gracious and dignified sweetness, he found no living model to express it satisfactorily. The peasant or laboring girl, who posed for hint had hands deformed by work, feet spoiled by their covering, and eyes disordered by shame, or demoralized by her calling. His "Forna- rina" has drooping shoulders, a meagre arm above the elbow, a hard and contracted expres- NATURE OF TILE WORK OF ART. 73 eion.* If he painted her in the Famesini Pal- ace, he completely transformed her, developing a character in his painted figure of which the real figure only contributed parts and suggestions. Thus the province of a work_of_ari; Js,. to..jm=.. der the essential character, or, at least, some capital quality, the predominance of which must be made as perceptible asjpossible. In order to_ accomplish this the artist must suppress whatever conceals it, select whatever manifests it, correct every detail by which it is enfeebled, and recast Ihoae in ujncih it is nentraKgecL Let us no longer consider works but artists, that is to say, the way in which artists feel, in- vent, and produce: you will find it consistent with the foregoing conception of the work of art. There is one gift indispensable to all artists ; no study, nc degree of patience, supplies its place ; if it is wanting in them they are nothing but copyists and mechanics. In confronting objects the artist most erperience original sensation; the See the two portraits of the "Fornarina," in the Sciarraand the Borghese palaces. 7 74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ARt character of an object strikes Mm, and the effect of this sensation is a strong, peculiar impression. In other words, when a man is born with talent liis perceptions or at least a certain class of per- ceptions are delicate and quick; he naturally seizes and distinguishes, with a sure and watch- ful tact, relationships and shades; at one time the plaintive or heroic sense in a sequence of sounds, at another the listlessness or stateliness of an attitude, and again the richness or sobriety of two complimentary or contiguous colors. Through this faculty he penetrates to the very heart of things, and seems to be more clear" sighted than other men. This sensation, more- over, so keen and so personal, is not inactive by a counter-stroke the whole nervous and thinking machinery is affected by it. Man involuntarily expresses his emotions; the body makes signs, its attitude becomes mimetic; he is obliged to figure externally his conception of an object ; the voice seeks imitative inflections, the tongue finds pictorial terma, unforeseen forms, a figurative, in- centive, exaggerated style. Under the force of NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. 75 the original impulse the active brain recasts and transforms the object, now to illumine and enno- ble it, now to distort and grotesquely pervert it ; in the free sketch, as in the violent caricature, you readily detect, with poetic temperaments, the ascendency of involuntary impressions. Famil- iarize yourselves with the great artists and great authors of your century ; study the sketches, de- signs, diaries, and correspondence of the old masters, and you will again everywhere find the same inward process. We may adorn it with beautiful names ; we may call it genius or inspi- ration, which is right and proper; but if you wish to define it precisely you must always Terify therein the vivid spontaneous sensation "which, groups together the train of accessory ideas, mas- LAI& in ter, fashion, mej " order to become manifest. ___^ __^^^^^BI^***^^^ We have now arrived at a definition of a work of art. Let us, for a moment, cast our eyes back- ward, and review the road we have passed over. We have, by degrees, arrived at a conception of art more and more elevated, and consequently 76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. more and more exact. At first we thought that the object of art was to imitate sensible appear- ances. Then separating material from intellectual imitatiDn, we found that what it desired to repro- duce in sensible appearances is the relationships of parts. Finally, remarking that relationships are, and ought to be, modified in order to obtain the highest results of art, we proved that if we study the relationships of parts it is to make pre- dominant an essential character. No one of these definitions destroys its antecedent, but each cor- rects and defines it. We are consequently able now to combine them, and by subordinating the inferior to the superior, thus to sum up the re- sult of our labor : "The end of a work of art is to manifest some essential or salient character, consequently some important idea, clearer and more completely than is attainable from real ob- . jects. Art accomplishes this end by employing a group of connected parts, the relationships of which it systematically modifies. In the three imitative arts of sculpture, painting, and poetry, these groups correspond to real objects." VL THAT established, gentlemen, we see, on eiam the different parts of this definition, that the first is essential and the second accessory. An aggregate of connected parts is necessary in all art which the artist may modify so as to por- tray character ; but in every art it is not neces- sary that this aggregate should correspond with real objects ; it is sufficient that it exists. If we therefore meet with aggregates of connected parts which are not imitations of real objects, there will be arts which will not have imitation for their point of view. This is the case, and it is thus that architecture and music are born. In short, besides connections, proportions, moral and or- ganic dependencies, which the three imitative arts copy, there are mathematical relationships which the two others, imitating nothing, combine. Let us, at first, consider the mathematical re- lationships perceived by the sense of sight. 78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. Magnitudes sensible to the eye may form amongst each other aggregates of parts connected by mathematical laws. For instance, a piece of wood or stone may have geometrical form, that of a cube, a cone, a cylinder, or a sphere, which establishes regular relationships of distance be- tween the different points of its outline. Fur- thermore, its dimensions may be quantities mu- tually related in simple proportions which the eye can seize readily ; height may be two, three or four times greater than thickness or breadth : this constitutes a second series of mathematical relationships. Finally, many of these pieces of wood or stone may be placed symmetrically on the top or by the side of each other, according to distances and angles mathematically combined. Architecture is established on this aggregate of *J\J CJ connected parts. An architect conceiving somo dominant character, either serenity, simplicity, strength, or elegance, as formerly in Greece or Home, or the strange, the varied, the infinite, the fantastic, as in Gothic times, may select and com- bine connections, proportions, dimensions, forms NATURE OF THE WORK OP ART. 79 and positions in short, the relationships of ma- terials, that is to say, certain visible magnitudes in such a way as to display the character aimed at By the side of magnitudes perceived by sight there are magnitudes perceived by the hearing, I mean the velocities of sonorous vibrations; and these vibrations being magnitudes may also form aggregates of parts connected by mathemat- ical laws. In the first place, as you are aware, a musical sound is composed of continuous vibra- tions of equal velocity, and this equality already places between them a mathematical relation- ship; in the second place, two sounds being given, the second may be composed of vibrations, two, three, or four times the rapidity of the first ; accordingly, there is between these two sounds a mathematical relationship, which is figured by placing them at an equal distance from each other on the musical stave. If, consequently, instead of taking two, we take a number of sounds, and place them at equal distances, we form a scale, which scale is the gamut, all the sounds being 80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. thus bound together according to their relative position on the gamut. You can now establish these connections either between successive or simultaneous sounds, the first order of sounds constituting melody, and the second harmony. This is music : it has two essential parts, based, like architecture, on mathematical relationships, which the artist is free to combine and modify. Music, however, possesses a second property, and this new element gives it a peculiar quality and no ordinary scope. Besides its mathemat- ical qualities, sound is analogous to the cry, and by this title it directly expresses with unrivaled precision, delicacy and force, suffering, joy, rage, indignation all the agitations and emotions of an animated sensitive being, even to the most secret and most subtle gradations. From this point of view it is similar to poetic declamation, furnishing a specific type of music, called the music of expression, like that of Gluck and the Germans, in opposition to the music of melody, that of Rossini and the Italians. Let the com- poser's point of view be what it may, the two NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. gl styles of music are nevertheless related to each other, sounds always forming aggregates of parts linked together at once by their mathematical relationship and by the correspondence which they have with the passions and the various in- ternal states of the moral being. The musician, therefore, who conceives a certain salient, im- portant feature of things, let it be sadness or joy, tender love or passionate rage, any idea or sen- timent whatever, may freely select and combine in such a way in these mathematical and moral relationships as to manifest the character which he has conceived. All the arts are thus included in the definition above presented. In architecture and music, as in sculpture, painting, and poetry, it is the object of a work of art to manifest some essential char- acter, and to employ as means of expression an aggregate of connected parts, the relationship ol which the artist combines and modifies. vn. Now that we know the nature of art, we can comprehend its importance. Previously we were only sensible of its effect ; it was a matter of in- stinct, and not of reason : we were conscious of respecting and esteeming art, but were not quali- fied to account for our respect and esteem. Our admiration for art can now be justified, and we can mark its place in the order of life. Man, in many respects, is an animal endeavor ing to protect himself against nature and against other men. He is obliged to provide him/self with food, clothing, and shelter, and to defend himself against climate, want, and disease. To do this he tills the ground, navigates the sea, and devotes himself to different industrial and com- mercial pursuits. Furthermore, he must perpet- uate his species, and secure himself against the violence of his fellow-men ; to this end, he forma families and states, and establishes magistracies, NATURE OF THE WORK OF ART. QQ functionaries, constitutions, laws, and armies. After so many inventions and such labor, he is not yet emancipated from his original condition ; he is still an animal, better fed and better pro- tected than other animals ; he still thinks only of himself, and of his kindred. At this moment a superior life dawns on him that of contempla- tion, by which he is led to interest himself in the creative and permanent causes on which his own being and that of his fellows depend, in the lead- ing and essential characters which rule each ag- gregate, and impress their marks on the minutest details. Two ways are open to him for this pur- pose. The first is Science, by which, analyzing these causes and these fundamental laws, he ex- presses them in abstract terms and precise form- ula; the second is Art, by which he manifests these causes and these fundamental laws no longer through arid definitions, inaccessible to the multitude, and only intelligible to a favored few, but in a sensible way, appealing not alone to reason, but also to the heart and senses of the humblest individual. Art has this peculiarity 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. that it is at once noble and popular, manifesting whatever is most exalted, and manifesting it to all PART II. ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. L HAVING investigated the nature of the work of art, there now remains a study of the law of its production. This law, in general terms, may be thus expressed : A loork of art is determined by an aggregate which is the general state of the mind and surrounding circumstances. I have stated this principle in the foregoing section, and have now to establish it. This law rests on two kinds of proof : the one that of experience, and the other that of reason. The former consists of an enumeration of the many instances in which the law verifies itself. Borne of these I have already presented to you. and others will soon follow. One may assert, moreover, that no case is known to which the 38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. law is not applicable; it is strictly so to those hitherto examined, and not merely in a general way, but in detail ; not only to the growth and extinction of great schools, but again to all the variations and oscillations to which art is subject. The second order of proof consists in showing this dependence to be not only rigorous in point of fact, but, again, that it is so through necessity. We will accordingly analyze what we have called the general state of the mind and surrounding circumstances; we shall seek, according to the ordinary standard of human nature the effects which a like state must produce on the public, on artists, and consequently on works of art. Hence we draw a forced connection and a defi- nite concordance, and we establish a necessary harmony which we had observed as simply for- tuitous. The second proof demonstrates what the first had averred. n. In order to make this harmony apparent let us resume a comparison already of service to us, that between a plant and a work of art, and note the circumstances in which a plant, or a species of plant, say the orange, may be developed and propagated in a certain soil. Let us suppose all kinds of grain and seed borne by the wind and sown at random ; on what conditions can those of the orange germinate, become trees, blossom, yield fruit, spread, and cover the ground with a numerous family? Many favorable circumstances are essential to this end. And at first the soil must be neither too light nor too meagre ; otherwise, the roots lack- ing depth and grasp, the tree would fall at the first gale of wind. Next, the soil muft not be too dry ; otherwise the tree will wither where it stands, deprived of the moisture of springs and streams. Moreover, the climate must be warm 90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AST. or the tree, which is delicate, will freeze, or at least droop, and never put forth sprouts; the summer must be long, in order that the fruit, which is slow in ripening, may fully mature ; and the winter mild, so that January frosts may not blast or shrivel the oranges that remain green on its branches. Finally, the soil must not be too favorable for other plants, lest the tree, left to it- self, might be stifled by the competition and in- fringement of a more vigorous vegetation. When all these conditions concur, the little orange will grow, become mature, and produce others again to reproduce themselves. Storms will undoubt- edly occur, stones fall, and browsing goats will de- stroy certain plants ; but on the whole, in spite of accidents which kill individuals, the species will be propagated, cover the ground, and in a few years display a flourishing grove of orange trees. All this is to be seen in the admirably sheltered gorges of Southern Italy, in the environs of Sor- rento and Amalfi, on the shores of the gulfs, and in the small, watered valleys, freshened by streams descending from the mountains, and ca- PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. Q\ reeaed by the beneficent breezes of the sea. This concourse of circumstances was necessary in or- der to produce those beautiful round tops, those lustrous domes of a bright deep green, those in- numerable golden apples, and that exquisite fra- grant vegetation which, in mid-winter, makes this coast the richest and loveliest of gardens. Let us now reflect on the manner in which things moved in this example. We have just ob- served the effect of circumstances and of physical temperature. Strictly speaking, these have not produced the orange ; the seeds were given, and these alone contained the vital force. The cir- cumstances described, however, were necessary in order that the plant might flourish and be propagated ; had these failed, the plant likewise would have failed. Accordingly, let the temperature be different, and the species of plant will be different. Sup- pose conditions entirely opposite to those just mentioned ; take the summit of a mountain swept by Tiolent winds, with a thin scanty soil a cold cli- mate, a short summer, and snow during the win 92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. ter ; not only will the orange not thrive here, but the greater part of other trees will perish. Of all the seeds scattered haphazard by the wind only one will survive, and you will see but one species to endure and be propagated, the only one adapted to these severe conditions; the fir and the pine will cover the lonely crags, the abrupt precipices, and long, rocky ridges, with their stiff colonnades of tall trunks and vast mantles of sombre green, and there, as in the Yosges, in Scotland and in Norway, you may travel league after league, under silent arches, on a carpet of crisp leaves, among gnarled roots obstinately clinging to the rocks, the domain of the patient, energetic plant which alone subsists under the in- cessant attacks of gales, and the hoar-frosts of long winters. We may accordingly regard temperature anJ physical circumstances as making a choice amongst various species of trees, allowing a certain species to subsist and propagate, to the exclusion, more or less complete, of all others Physical temperature acts by elimination and PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 93 suppression, in other words, by natural selection. Such is the great law by which we now explain the origin and structure of diverse existing organ- isms a law as applicable to moral as to physical conditions, to history as well as to botany and zoology, to genius and to character, as well as to plant and to animal. In short, there is a moral temperature, con- sisting of the general state of minds and manners, which acts in the same way as the other. Prop- erly speaking, this temperature does not produce artists; talent and genius are gifts like seeds; what I mean to say is, that the same country at different epochs probably contains about the same number of men of talent, and of men of mediocrity. We know, in fact, through statistics, that in two successive generations nearly the same number of men are found of the requisite stature for the conscription and the same num- ber of men too small for soldiers. In all proba- bility, it is with minds as with bodies. Nature is a PK>wer of men, and putting her hand constantly in *he same sack, distributes nearly the same 94 TEE PHILOSOPHY OF AET. quantity, the same quality, the same proportion of seed. But in these handfuls of seed which she scatters as she strides over time and space, not all germinate. A certain moral temperature is necessary to develop certain talents ; if this is wanting, these prove abortive. Consequently, as the temperature changes, so will the species of talent change ; if it becomes reversed, talent will become reversed, and, in general, we may con- ceive moral temperature as making a selection 'among different species of talent, allowing only this or that species to develop, to the exclusion more or less complete of others. It is through some such mechanism that you see developed in schools at certain times and in certain countries the sentiment of the ideal, that of the real, that of drawing and that of color. There is a pre- vailing tendency which constitutes the spirit of the age. Talent seeking to force an outlet in an- other direction, finds it closed ; and the force of the public mind and surrounding habits repress and lead it astray, by imposing on it a fixed growth. IIL THE foregoing comparison may serve yon as a general indication ; let us now enter into details and study the action of the moral temperature on works of art. For the sake of greater clearness we will take a very simple case, that of a certain mental con- dition, in which melancholy predominates. This supposition is not arbitrary, for such a condition has frequently occurred in the life of humanity : five or six centuries of decadence, depopulation, foreign invasion, famine, pests, and aggravated misery, are amply sufficient to produce it. Asia experienced such a state of things in the sixth century before Christ, and Europe in the period of the first ten centuries of our own era. In times like these men lose both courage and hope, and regard life as a burden. Let us contemplate the effect of such a mental oudition, together with the circumstances which tjQ THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. engender it, on the artists of an epoch like this. We admit that nearly the same number of melan- choly and joyous temperaments, as well as a mix- ture of both, are met in this as at other times ; how and in what sense does the prevailing situa- tion effect their transformation ? It must be borne in mind that the misfortunes that afflict the public also afflict the artist ; he is one of the flock, and he suffers as the rest suffer. For example, if invasions of barbarians occur, and pests, famines, and calamities of all sorts prolonged for centuries and spread over the entire country; not only one, but countless miracles, would be necessary to save him harmless in the general inundation. On the contrary, it is prob- able, and even certain, that he will have his share of public misfortune ; that he will be ruined, beat- en, wounded, and led into captivity like others ; that his wife, children, relatives and friends will share the common fate, and that he will suffer and be subject to fears on their account, as well as on his own. During this long-continued flood of personal misery he will, if he is gay, become PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF AST. 97 less gay, and, if melancholy, still more melan- choly. This is the first effect of his social me- dium. On the other hand, if the artist is raised among melancholy companions, the ideas he receives in infancy, with those acquired afterwards, are mel- ancholy. The dominant religion, accommoda- ting itself to the lugubrious order of things, teaches him that the earth is a place of exile, the world a prison-house, life an evil, and that all that concerns him is to deserve to get out of it Philosophy, forming its morality according to the lamentable spectacle of man's degeneracy, proves to him that it would have been better for him not to have been born. Ordinary conversation teems with only mournful events, the invasion of a province, the destruction of some monument, the oppression of the weak, and civil wars among the strong. Daily observation reveals to him only images of discouragement and grief, beggars, and cases of starvation, a bridge left to decay, aban- doned, crumbling houses, fields going to waste, and the black walls of dwellings ravaged by fire. 9 98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART, All these impressions sink deep in his mind from the first year of his life to the last, incessantly aggravating whatever melancholy sentiment arises out of his own misfortunes. They aggravate him so much the more propor- tionately to the intensity of his artistic feeling. What makes him an artist is the practice of imi- tating the essential character of things, the sal- ient points of objects ; other men only see por- tions, while he sees the whole and the spirit of them. And as in this case the salient character- istic is melancholy, he accordingly perceives nothing else. Moreover, through this excess of imagination and this instinct of exaggeration pe- culiar to artists, he amplifies and expands it tc the utmost ; he becomes impregnated with it, and charges his work with it, so that he commonly sees and paints things in much darker colors than would be employed by his contemporaries. It must be added also that he finds them of great assistance to him in his work. You know that a man who paints or writes remains not alone face to face with his canvas or his writing- PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 99 desk On the contrary, he goes out and talks to people and looks about him; he listens to the hints of his friends or rivals, and seeks sugges- tions in books and from surrounding works of art. An idea resembles a seed : if the seed re- quires, in order to germinate, develop and bloom, the nourishment which water, air, sun and soil af- ford it, the idea, in order to complete and shape itself into form, requires to be supplemented and aided by other minds. Accordingly, in these epochs of melancholy, what sort of suggestions are other minds capable of furnishing? Only melancholy ones, for only on this side do men labor. As their experience provides them only with painful sensations and sentiments, they can only note the shades of difference, and record dis- coveries made on the path of suffering : the heart is the only field of observation, and if this is filled with sorrow, sorrow is all that men contemplate. They are, therefore, conscious only of grief, de- jection, chagrin and despair. If the artist de- mands instruction of them this is all the return they can make. To seek in them any idea cr any 100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. information on the different kinds or different expressions of joy would be labor lost ; they can only furnish what they possess. For this reason let him attempt to portray happiness, cheerful- ness, or gayety, and he stands alone, deprived of all support, left to his own resources, and which in an isolated man amounts to nothing. His labor will likewise be stamped with mediocrity. On the other hand, when he would paint melan- choly sentiments his century would come to his aid. He finds materials prepared for him by pre- ceding schools ; he finds a ready-made art, con- sisting of known processes and a beaten track. A church ceremony, a piece of furniture, a con- versation, suggests to him a form, a color, a phrase, or a character still unknown to hi ; his work, to which millions of unknown co-laborers have contributed, is all the more beautiful, be- cause, in addition to his own labor and his own genius, it embodies the labor and genius of sur- rounding society, and of generations that have before it. There is still another reason, and the strongesi PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 1Q1 of all, which draws him to melancholy subjects ; it is that his work, once exposed to the public eye, finds appreciation only as it expresses mel- ancholy ideas. Men, indeed, can only compre- hend sentiments analogous to those they have themselves experienced. Other sentiments, no matter how powerfully expressed, do not affect them ; they look with their eyes, but the heart is dormant and directly their eyes are averted. Imagine a man losing his fortune, country, chil- dren, health and liberty, one manacled in a dun- geon for twenty years, like Pellico or Andryane, whose spirit by degrees is changed and broken, and who becomes melancholy and a mystic, and whose discouragement is incurable ; such a man entertains a horror of cheerful music, and has no disposition to read Babelais; if you place him before the merry brutes of Rubens, he will turn aside and place himself before the canvases of Rembrandt; he will enjoy only the music of Chopin and the poetry of Lamartine or Heine. The same thing happens to the public and to in- dividuals ; their taste depends on their situation ; 102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AET. their sadness gives them a taste for melancholj works ; cheerful productions are accordingly re- pudiated, and the artist is censured or neglected. Now an artist composes mostly in order to obtain appreciation and applause; this is his ruling passion. Hence, therefore, besides other causes, his ruling passion, added to the pressure of pub- lic opinion, leads him, pushes him, and con- stantly brings him back to the expression of melancholy, and barring the ways to him which would lead him to the portrayal of gayety and happiness. Through this series of obstacles every passage would be closed for works of art manifesting joy. If an artist overcomes one obstacle, he is arrested by others. If he meets with joyous natures he will be saddened by their personal misfortunes. Education and current conversation fill their minds with gloomy ideas. The artists' faculties by which they detach and amplify the leading traits of objects, will find for their exercise none but melancholy ones. The experience and laboi of others provide them with suggestions and nt PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 103 oo-operative only in melancholy subjects. Fi- nally, the earnest and decisive will of the public allows them to produce only melancholy subjects. Consequently, the class of artists and their works suitable for the expression of gayety and joyous- ness disappear, or end by becoming reduced to almost nothing. Consider, now, the opposite case, that of a general condition of cheerfulness. That occurs in renaissance epochs, when order, wealth, popu- lation, comfort, prosperity, and useful and beau- tiful discoveries are constantly increasing. By reversing its terms the analysis we have just made is applicable word for word; the same process of reasoning proves that the works of art of such a period will all, more or less, express a joyous character. Consider, now, an intermediary case, that is to say, a commingling of this or that phase of joy or sadness, which is the ordinary condition of things. By a proper modification of terms, the analysis is equally pertinent ; the same reasoning demonstrates that works of art express cone- 1 04 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. spending combinations, and a corresponding spe- cies of joy and melancholy. Let us conclude, therefore, that in every sim- ple or complex state, the social medium, that is to say, the general state of mind and manners, determines the species of works of art in suffer- ing only those which are in harmony with it, and in suppressing other species, through a series oi obstacles interposed, and a series of attacks re- newed, at every step of their development. IV. LET us now leave supposed cases, simplified to give clearness to the exposition, and take np real ones. You will see in glancing at the most important of a historical series, a verification of the law. I will select four which are the four great cycles of European civilization Greek and Koman antiquity, the feudal and Christian mid- dle ages, the well-regulated aristocratic monarch- ies of the seventeenth century, and the industrial democracies of the present day, directed by the sciences. Each of these periods has its own art, or some department of art peculiar to it, either sculpture, architecture, the drama or music, or some determined phase of each of these great arts ; in every case a distinct, singularly rich and complete vegetation, which, in its leading feat- ures, reflects the principal traits of the art and the nation. Let us, accordingly, consider in turn the different soils, and we shall see that all pr> duce different flowers. V. ABOUT three thousand years ago there ap- peared on the shores and islands of the .2EgeaE Sea a remarkably handsome, intelligent race, viewing life in quite a new way. It did not allow itself to be absorbed by a great religious concep- tion like the Hindoos and Egyptians, nor by a great social organization like the Assyrians and Persians, nor by great industrial and commer- cial usages after the fashion of Phoenicians and Carthagenians. Instead of a theocracy and a hierarchy of caste, and instead of a monarchy and a hierarchy of functionaries and of great trading and commercial establishments, the men of that race had an invention of their own called the city, which city, in sending forth branches, gave birth to others of the same description. One of these, Miletus, produced three hundred towns and colonized the entire coast of the Black Sea. Others did the same, the Mediterranean Sea be- PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. JQ7 ing encircled with a garland of flourishing cities, extending from Gyrene to Marseilles, along the golfs and promontories of Spain, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor and Africa. What was the life of this city?* A citizen performed but little manual labor ; he was gener- ally supported by his subjects and tributaries, and always served by slaves. The poorest man in the place had one to keep house for him. Athens counted four for each citizen ; and lesser cities, like ^Bgina and Corinth, possessed from four to five hundred thousand. Servants, of course, abounded. The citizen, however, needed but little help. Like all the finely-built races of the south, he was abstemious, a meal consisting of three or four olives, a bit of garlic, and the head of a fish.t His wardrobe consisted of san- dals, a small shirt, and a large mantle, like that of a shepherd. His house was a narrow, frail, ill- constructed tenement, into which robbers could Grotc, History of Greecv Boeckh, Political Economy of tkj Atktniatu Wallon, Slavery in Antiquity. \ The Frogs of Aristophanes ; the Cock of Locian. 108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AET. penetrate by piercing the walls,* and which he only used for sleeping ; a bed and two or three beautiful vases were the principal articles of fur- niture. The citizen had few wants, and he passed the day in the open air. How did he dispose of his leisure? Serving neither king nor priest, he was, as far as he was concerned, free and sovereign in the city. He elected his own pontiffs and magistrates, and he himself, in turn, could be elected to sacerdotal and other offices ; whether blacksmith or currier, he judged the most important political cases in the tribunals, and decided the gravest of affairs of state in the assemblies ; his occupation consist- ed, substantially, of public business and war. To be a politician and a soldier was a part of his duty; other pursuits were of little importance to him; the attention of a free man, in his opinion, ought to be applied to these two employments. And he was right, for, at that time, human life was not protected as it is in ours ; human societies had not acquired the stability which they now have * Their proper name was wall-piercers. PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. l()fl Most of these cities, built and scattered along the Mediterranean shores, were surrounded by bar- barians eager to prey upon them ; the citizen was obliged to be under arms, like the European of the present day in Japan and in New Zealand ; if not, Gauls, Libyans, Samnites and Bithynians would soon have pitched their camps amid the ruins of battered walls and devastated temples. Besides all this, these cities were inimical to each other. The rights of war were atrocious ; a van- quished city was often devoted to destruction ; a wealthy noted man might any day see his dwell- ing in ashes, his property pillaged, his wife and daughters sold to recruit places of prostitution ; he himself, and his sons, enslaved, would be buried hi mines, or compelled by the lash to turn a mill. With such perils before him it is natural for a man to be interested in affairs of state, and be qualified for battle ; he has to become a poli- tician under penalty of death. Ambition, how- ever, and love of glory are equal stimulants. Every city aspired to reduce or humble every other city, to acquire vassals, to conquer or tc 10 THE PhlLOSOPHY OF ART. raake profitable the persons of others.* The cifc izen passed his life in the public thoroughfares discussing the best means for preserving and aggrandizing his city, canvassing its alliances, treaties, laws and constitution ; now listening to orators, and again acting as one himself up to the very moment of going aboard his vessel in order to wage war in Thrace or in Egypt, against other Greeks, against the barbarians, or against the Great King. To reach this point, they had systematized a peculiar discipline. As there were no industrial facilities in those days, the machinery of war was unknown. "War was a combat between man and man ; consequently, the essential thing to insure victory was not to transform soldiers into mar- shaled automatons, as in our day, but to render each soldier the most resistant, the strongest, and the most agile body possible ; in short, a highly- tempered gladiator, capable of the utmost phys- * Thucydides, Book I. See the divers expeditions of th# Athenians between the peace cf Cimon and the Peloponnesiaz, PRODUCTION CF THE Wb&K Of AKT. \\\ ical endurance To this end, Sparta which, about the eighth century, gave the example and the im- pulse to all Greece, had a very complicated and no less efficacious military system. She herself was a camp without walls, situated, like our camps in Kabyle, amidst enemies and a con- quered people, wholly military, and devoted to attack and self-defense. In order to have a per- fect military, it was necessary to have a splendid race ; it was managed as in stock-breeding. All deformed children were deprived of life. The law, moreover, prescribed the age for marriage and selected the most suitable time and circum- stances for proper breeding. An old man hap- pening to have a young wife was obliged to give her over to a young man in order to have a good healthy offspring. A middle-aged man having a friend whose beauty and character he admired, might give him the use of his wife.* After hav- ing constituted the race, they shaped the individ- ual. Young men were enrolled, drilled, and ac- austomed to live in common like a troop of cr Xenophon. The Lacedemonian Republic, parsim. 112 TEE PHILOSOPHY OP ART. dren. They were divided into two rival bands, who inspected each other, and fought together with their feet and their fists. They slept in the open air, bathed in the cool waters of the Euro- tas, went marauding, ate sparingly, fast and bad- ly, rested on beds of rushes, drank nothing but water, and endured every inclemency of climate. Young girls exercised in the same manner, and the matured were restricted to almost the same routine. The rigor of this antique discipline was undoubtedly less, or was mitigated, in other cit- ies ; nevertheless, with these mitigations, the same road conducted to the same end. Young people passed the greater part of the day in the gymnasia, wrestling, jumping, boxing, racing, pitching quoits ; fortifying and rendering supple their naked muscles. It was their aim to pro- duce strong, robust bodies, the most beautiful and the nimblest possible, and no system of edu- cation ever succeeded better in obtaining them.* These peculiar customs of the Greeks gave birth to peculiar ideas. In their eyes the idea? The Dialogues of Plato. The Clouds of Aristophanes. PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OPART. H3 man was not the man of thought, or a man of delicate sensibility, but the naked man, the man of a fine stock and growth, well-proportioned, ac- tive and accomplished in all physical exercises. This mode of thinking was manifested by a vari- ety of traits. In the first place, whilst the Ca- nans and the Lydians around them, and their barbarian neighbors generally, were ashamed to appear naked, they stripped without embarrass- ment in order to wrestle and run races.* The young girls of Sparta were in the habit of exer- cising almost naked. You will perceive that gymnastic exercises had suppressed, or at least transformed, modesty. In the second place, the great national festivals of the Greeks, the Olym- pian, Pythian, and Nemean games, consisted of a display and triumph of the naked figure. The youth of the first families resorted to these from all parts of Greece, and from the remotest Gre- cian colonies. They prepared themselves for them a long time beforehand by special training * The Lacedemonians adopted this autom al-out the 14^1 Olympiad. Plato. THE PHILOSOPHY OF AH T. and tne severest labor, and there, under the eyes- and applause of the whole nation, stripped of their clothing, they wrestled, boxed, pitched quoits, and raced on foot or in the chariot. Vic- tories of this class, which we of the present day leave to a Hercules in a circus, they regarded as of the first importance. The victorious athlete in the foot-race gave his name to the Olympiad ; his praises were chanted by the greatest poets Pindar, the most illustrious lyric poet of antiq- uity, sang only of chariot races. On returning to his native city the victorious athlete was re- ceived in triumph, and his strength and agility became the pride of the place. One of these, Milo of Crotona, who was invincible at wrestling, was chosen general, and led his fellow-citizens to battle, clad in a lion's skin and armed with a club like Hercules, to whom he was compared. It is related that a certain Diagoras saw his two sons crowned on the same day, and was carried around by them in triumph before the assembled multi- tude Deeming a like happiness too great foi one mortal, the people cried out to him, "Din PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. Diagoras, for thou canst not now become a god ! " Diagoras, suffocated with emotion, did indeed expire in the arms of his children. In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Greece, to see his sons pos- sessing the most vigorous fists and the nimblest legs was the height of terrestrial bliss. Whether this be truth or legend, such a judgment proves the excessive degree of admiration entertained by the Greeks for the perfection of the human form. On this account they were not afraid to expose it before the gods on solemn occasions. They had a formal system of attitudes and actions, called orcJiestriqw, which regulated and taught them beautiful postures of the sacred dances. After the battle of Salamis the tragic poet Soph- ocles, then fifteen years old, and celebrated for his beauty, stripped himself of his clothing in order to dance and chant the psean before the trophy. One hundred years later, Alexander, on passing through Asia Minor to contend with Da- rins, cast aside his garments, along with his com- panions, for the purpose of honoring the tomb of Achilles with races. But the Greeks weuc still THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. further; they considered the perfection of th human form as attesting divinity. In a town in Sicily a young man of extraordinary beauty was worshiped, and after death, altars were erected in his honor.* In Homer, which is the Grecian Bible, you will find everywhere that the gods had a human body which the flesh-lance could pierce, flowing red blood, instincts, passions and pleasures similar in every respect to our own, and to such an extent that heroes become the lovers of goddesses, and gods beget children of mortal mothers. Between Olympus and the earth there is no abyss ; they descend from, and we ascend to, it ; if they surpass us, it is because they are exempt from death, because their wounds heal quicker, and they are stronger, handsomer and happier than we. In other re- spects, they eat, drink and quarrel as we do, aD enjoying the same senses, and employing the game corporeal functions. Greece has so well worked out its model of the beautiful humar animal that it has made its idol of it, and gloii * Herodotus. PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. \\ ~ t ues it on earth, by making a divinity of it k heaven. Out of this conception statuary is born, and we can mark every moment of its growth. On the one hand, an athlete, once crowned, was entitled to a statue ; crowned a third time, he was awarded an iconical statue that is to say, an effigy bear- ing his portrait. On the other hand, the gods being only human forms, more serene and more perfect than others, it was natural to represent them by statues. For that purpose there is no need of a forced dogma. The marble or bronze effigy is not an allegory, but an exact image ; it does not give to the god muscles, bones, and a heavy covering which it has not; it represents the re-clothing of flesh which covers it, and the living form which is its substance. It suffices, in order to be a truthful portrait, that it should be the most beautiful, and reproduce the immortal calm by which the god is exalted above mortals. The statue is now blocked out is the sculptor qualified to produce it ? Dwell a moment on his preparation. Men in those days studied th<- body naked and in action, in the baths, in tht gymnasia, in the sacred dances and at the public games ; they observed and preferred such forms and such attitudes as denoted vigor, health, and activity ; they labored with all their might to im- press on it these forms and to shape it to these attitudes. For three or four hundred years they were thus correcting, purifying, developing their idea of physical beauty. It is not surprising that they finally discovered the ideal type of the hu- man form. We of the present day that are fa- miliar with it owe our knowledge of it to them. When Nicholas of Pisa and other early sculptors at the end of the Gothic period abandoned the meagre, bony, and ugly forms of hieratic tradi- tion, it was because they took an example from Greek bas-reliefs, preserved or exhumed ; and if to-day, forgetting our distorted and defective bodies, as plebeians or thinkers, we wish to find again some type of the perfect form, it is in these statues, monuments of a noble, unoccupied, gym- nastic life, that we must seek our instruction. Not only the form of it is perfect, but again/ PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. which is unique, it suffices for the thought of the artist. The Greeks, having assigned to the body a dignity of its own, were not tempted, like the moderns, to subordinate it to the head. A chest breathing healthily, a trunk solidly resting on the thighs, a nervous supple leg impelling the body forward with ease ; they did not occupy them- selves solely with the breadth of a thoughtful forehead, with the frown of an irritated brow, or the turn of a sarcastic lip. They could limit themselves to the conditions of perfect statuary, which leaves the eye without an iris, and the head without expression ; which prefers quiet person- ages, or those occupied by insignificant action ; which commonly employs only a uniform tint, either of marble or of bronze ; which leaves the picturesque to painting, and abandons dramatic interest to literature ; which, confined to, but en- nobled by, the nature of its materials and its lim- ited domain, avoids the representation of details, of physiognomy, of the casualties of human agi- tn.tion, in order to detach the pure and abstract form, and thus illuminate the sanctuaries with 120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF A&T. motionless, peaceful, august effigies in which hu* man nature recognized its heroes and its gods. Statuary, accordingly, is the central art of Greece; other arts are related to it, accompany it, or imitate it. No other art has so well ex- pressed the national life ; no other was so culti- vated or so popular. In the hundred small tem- ples around Delphi, in which the treasures of the cities were kept, "a whole world of marble, gold, silver, brass, and bronze, twenty different bronzes, and of all tints, thousands of glorified dead in ir- regular groups, seated and standing, radiated the veritable subjects of the god of light." * When Borne, at a later day, despoiled the Greek world of its treasures, this vast city possessed a popula- tion of statues almost equal to that of its living inhabitants. At the present time, after so many centuries and such devastation, it is estimated that more than sixty thousand statues have been discovered at Borne and in its surrounding Cam- pagna. A like harvest of sculpture has never been seen, such a prodigious abundance of * Michelet. PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. J21 era, a display of flowers so perfect, a growth so natural, so continuous and varied. You have just seen the cause of it, in digging up the earth layer by layer, and in observing that all the foun- dations of the human soil, institutions, manners, ideas, have contributed to sustain it 11 VL Tais military organization common to all the cities of antiquity at length had its effect, a sad effect. War being the natural condition of things, the weak were overpowered by the strong, and, more than once, one might have seen formed states of considerable magnitude under the con- trol or tyranny of a victorious or dominant city. Finally one arose, Rome, which, possessing greater energy, patience, and sMll, more capable of subordination and command, of consecutive views and practical calculations, attained, after seven hundred years of effort, in incorporating under her dominion the entire basin of the Med- iterranean and many great outlying countries. To gain this point she submitted to military dis- cipline, and, like a fruit springing from its germ, a military despotism was the issue. Thus was the Empire formed. Towards the first century of our era, the world, organized under a regular PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 123 monarchy, seemed at last to have attained to order and tranquillity. It issued only in a de- cline. In the horrible destruction of conquest cities perished by hundreds and men by millions. During an entire century the conquerors them- selves massacred each other, and the civilized world having lost its free men, lost the half of its inhabitants.* Citizens, converted into subjects, and no longer pursuing noble ends, abandoned themselves to indolence and luxury, refused to marry and to have children. Machinery being unknown, and the hand the only instrument of labor, the slaves, whose lot it was to provide for the pleasures, pomp, and refinements of society, disappeared under a burden too heavy for them to bear. At the expiration of four hundred years the enervated, depopulated empire had not suf- ficient men or energy to repel the barbarians. The barbarous wave entered, sweeping away the dykes ; after the first, a second, then a third, and so on for a period of five hundred years. The evils they inflicted cannot be described : people ' Rome, thirty yean B. C., by Victor Duruy. 124 THE PHILOSOPHY or ART. exterminated, monuments destroyed, fields dev- astated, and cities burnt ; industry, the fine arts, and the sciences mutilated, degraded, forgotten , fear, ignorance, and brutality spread everywhere and established. They were complete savages, similar to the Hurons and Iroquois suddenly en- camped in the midst of a cultivated and thinking world like ours. Imagine a herd of wild bulls let loose amid the furniture and decorations of a palace, and after this another herd, so that the ruins left by the first perished under the hoofs of the second, and, scarcely installed in disorder, each troop of brutes had to arouse itself in order to battle with its horns a bellowing, insatiable troop of invaders. When at last, in the tenth century, the last horde had made its lair and glutted itself, men seemed to be in no better con- dition. The barbarian chiefs becoming feudal barons, fought amongst themselves, pillaging peasants and burning their crops, robbing the merchants, and wantonly robbing and maltreat- ing their miserable serfs. The land remained waste, and provisions became scarce. In the PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF AET. 125 eleventh century forty out of seventy years were years of famine. A monk, Baonl Glaber, relates that it got to be common to eat human flesh ; a butcher was burnt alive for exposing it for sale in his stall. Add to this universal poverty and filth, and a total neglect of the simplest of hy- gienic principles, and you can well understand how leprosy, pests, and epidemics, becoming ac- climated, raged as if upon their native soil. People degenerated to the condition of the an- thropophagi of New Zealand, to the ignoble bru- tality of the Papuans and Caledonians, to the lowest depths of the human cesspool, seeing that reminiscences of the past trenched on the misery of the present, and since some t.hinTdng heads, still reading the ancient language felt in a con- fused way the immensity of the fall, the whole depth of the abyss into which the human species had been engulfed for a thousand years. Yon may divine the sentiments which such a condition of things, so extreme and so lasting, implanted in people's breasts. At first there was weakness, disgust of life, and the deepest 126 THE PHILOSOPHY OS ALT. choly ; "the world," said a writer of that day, "is nothing but an abyss of vice and immodesty." Life seemed a foretaste of hell. Many withdrew from it, and not alone the poor, the feeble, and women, but sovereign lords, and even kings; such as possessed delicate and noble natures pre- ferred the tranquileity and monotony of the clois- ter. On the approach of the year one thousand a general belief in the extinction of the world pre- vailed, and many, seized with fright, made over their property to churches and convents. On the other hand, and coupled with this terror and de- spondency, there arose an extraordinary degree of nervous exaltation. When men are very mis- erable they become excitable, like invalids and prisoners; their sensibility increases, and ac- quires a feminine delicacy; their heart is filled with caprices, agitations and despondency, ex- cesses and effusions from which they are free in a healthy state. They depart from moderate sentiments which alone can maintain continuous masculine action. They indulge in reverie, burst into tears, sink down on thoir knees, become in- PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 127 capable of providing for themselves, imagine in- finite sweet and tender transports, yearning to diffuse the excessive refinements and enthusiasm of their overwrought intemperate imaginations , in short, they are prone to love. Hence, we see them developed with an enormous exaggeration, a passion unknown to the stern and virile souls of antiquity, namely, the chivalric mystic love of the middle ages. The calm rational love of wed- lock was subordinated to the ecstatic and unruly love encountered outside of wedlock. Its sub- tleties were carefully defined and embodied in the maxims of tribunals presided over by ladies. It was decreed there that "love could not exist between spouses," and that "love could refuse nothing to love."* "Woman was no longer con- sidered as flesh and blood like man, but was con- verted into a divinity ; a man was only too well compensated in the privilege of adoring and serv- ing her. Human love was regarded as a celestial sentiment leading to divine love and confounded with it. Poets transformed their mistresses into * Andr le Chapelain. 128 Z 1 - 2 ^ PHU.OSOPHY OF ABT. supernatural virtue, and implored them to guide them through the empyrean to the tabernacle of God. You can easily appreciate the hold the Christian faith derived from such sentiments. Disgust for the world, a tendency to ecstasy, ha- bitual despair and infinite craving for tender sympathy, naturally impelled men to a doctrine representing the earth as a vale of tears, the present life a period of trial, rapturous union with the Divinity as supreme happiness, and the love of God as the first of duties. Morbid or trembling sensibility found its support in the in- finitude of terror and of hope, in pictures of flaming pits and eternal perdition, and in con- ceptions of a radiant paradise and of ineffable bliss. Thus supported, Christianity ruled all souls, inspired art, and gave employment to ar- tists. "Society," says a contemporary, "divested itself of its old rags in order to clothe its churches in robes of whiteness." Gothic archi- tecture accordingly made its appearance. Let us observe the growth of the new Gothic edifice. In opposition to the religions of antiq- PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. oiiy, wliich were all local, belonging to castes or to families, Christianity is a universal religion which appeals to the multitude, and summons all men to salvation. It was necessary accordingly for this new edifice to be veiy large and capable of containing the entire population of any one city or district the women, the children, the serfs, the artisans, and the poor as well as the nobles and sovereigns. The small cetta which contains the statue of the Greek god, and the portico where the procession of free citizens was displayed, were not sufficient for this immense crowd. An enormous vault was required, lofty naves multiplied and crossed by others, and measureless arches and colossal columns ; gener- ations of workmen flocked in crowds for centuries to labor here for the salvation of their souls, dis- placing mountains before the monument could be completed. The men who enter here have sorrowing souls, and the ideas they come in quest of are mournful. They meditate on this miserable life, so troubled and confined by such an abyss, on hell and it* 130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. punishments, endless, measureless and unintei- mittent, on the sufferings and passion of Christ crucified, and those of persecuted and tortured saints and martyrs. Listening to such religious teaching, and under the burden of their own fears, they could ill accommodate themselves to the simple beauty and joyous effect of pure light -, the clear and healthy light of day is accordingly excluded ; the interior of the edifice remains sub- ject to cold and lugubrious shadow; light only comes in transformed by stained glass into pur- ple and crimson tints, into the splendors of topaz and amethyst, into the mystic gleams of precious stones, into strange illuminations, seeming to af- ford glimpses of paradise. Delicate over-excited imaginations like these are not content with simple architectural forms. And first, form in itself is not sufficient to inter- est them. It must be a symbol of and designate some august mystery. The edifice with its trans- verse naves represents the cross on which Christ died ; its circular window with its brilliant petals figures the rose of eternity, the leaves of which PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 1^[ are redeemed souls; all the dimensions of ite parts correspond to sacred numbers. Again, these forms in their richness, strangeness, bold- ness, delicacy and immensity, harmonize with the intemperance and curiosity of a morbid fancy. Vivid sensations manifold, changing, bizarre and extreme are necessary to such souls. They reject the column, the horizontal and transverse beams, the round arch, in short, the solid con- struction, balanced proportions, and beautiful simplicity of antique architecture; they do not sympathize with those noble creations that seem to have been born without pain and to last with- out effort, which attain to beauty the same time as to life, and the finished excellence of which needs neither addition nor ornament. They adopt for type, not the plain half-circle of the arcade, or the simple angle formed by the column and the architrave, but the complicated union of two curves intersected by each other, forming the ogive. They aspire to the gigantic, covering square acres of ground with piles of stone, binding pillars together in monstrous ool- 132 TnE PHILOSOPHY OF AB1. umns, suspending galleries in the air, elevating arches to the skies, and stage upon stage of belfry until their spires are lost in the clouds. They exaggerate the delicacy of forms ; they surround doors with series of statuettes, and festoon the sides with trefoils, gables and gargoyles ; they in- terlace the tortuous tracery of mullions with the motley hues of stained glass ; the choir seems to be embroidered with lace, while tombs, altars, stalls and towers are covered with mazes of slen- der columns and fringes of leaves and statues. It seems as if they wished to attain at once infi- nite grandeur and infinite littleness, seeking to overwhelm the mind on either side, on the one hand with the vastness of a mass, and on the other with a prodigious quantity of details. Their object was evidently to produce an extra- ordinary sensation; they aimed to dazzle and bewilder. Proportionately, therefore, to the development of this style of architecture, it becomes more and more paradoxical. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the age of the flamboyant Gothic oJ P&OLWTION OF THE WORK OF ART. Strasburg, Milan, York, Nuremburg, and the Church of Brou, solidity seems to have been wholly abandoned for ornament. At one time it bristles with a profusion of multiplied and super- posed pinnacles ; at another its exterior is draped with a lacework of mouldings. Walls are hollowed out, and almost wholly absorbed by windows; they lack strength, and without the buttresses raised against them the structure would fall ; ever disintegrating, it is necessary to establish colonies of masons about them con- stantly to repair their constant decay. This em- broidered stonework, more and more frail as it ascends the spire, cannot sustain itself ; it has to be fastened to a skeleton of iron, and as iron rusts, the blacksmith is summoned to contribute his share towards propping up this unstable, de- lusive magnificence. In the interior the decora- tion is so exuberant and complex, the groinings so richly display their thorny and tangled vegeta- tion, and the stalls, pulpit, and railings, swarm with such intricate, tortuous, fantastic arabesques, that the church no longer soems to be a sacred 12 134 THE PHILOSOPHY 01? ART. monument, but a rare example of the jeweler's art. It is a vast structure of variegated glass, a gigantic piece of filigree work, a festive decora- tion as elaborated as that of a queen or a bride ; it is the adornment of a nervous, over-excited woman, similar to the extravagant costumes of the day, whose delicate and morbid poesy de- notes by its excess the singular sentiments, the feverish, violent, and impotent aspiration peculiar to an age of knights and monks. For this architecture, which has lasted four centuries, is not confined to one country or to one description of edifice ; it is spread over all Europe, from Scotland to Sicily, and is employed in all civil and religious and public and private monuments. Not only do cathedrals and chapels bear its imprint, but fortresses, palaces, costumes, dwellings, furniture, and equipments. Its uni- versality, accordingly, expresses and attests the great moral crisis, at once morbid and sublime, which, during the whole of the middle ages, ex- alted, and at the same time disordered, the human intellect. m HUMAN institutions, like living bodies, are made and unmade by their own forces ; and their health passes away or their cure is effected by the sole effect of their nature and their situation. Among these feudal chiefs who ruled and plun- dered men in the middle ages one was found in each country, stronger, more politic, and better placed than others, who constituted himself con- servator of public order; sustained by public sentiment, he by degrees weakened and subdued, subordinated and rallied the others, and, organ- izing a systematic obedient administration, be- came under the name of king the head of the nation. Towards the fifteenth century, the barons, formerly his equals, were only his offi- cers, and towards the seventeenth century they were simply his courtiers. Note the significance of this term. A courtier is a member of the king's court ; that is to say, a 136 TJIE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. person charged with some function or domestic duty in the palace either chamberlain, equerry, or gentleman of the antechamber receiving a salary, and addressing his master with all the deference and ceremonial obsequiousness proper to such an employment. But this person is not a valet, as in oriental monarchies, for his ances- tor, the grandfather of his grandfather, was the equal, the companion, the peer of the king ; and on this account he himself belongs to a privileged class, that of noblemen. He does not serve his prince solely through personal interest ; his de- votion to him is a point of honor. The prince in his turn never neglects to treat him with consid- eration. Louis XIV. threw his cane out of the window in order not to be tempted to strike Lauzun, who had offended him. The courtier is honored by his master, and regarded as one of his society. He lives in familiarity with him, dances at his balls, dines at his table, rides in the same carriage, sits in the same chairs, and fre- quents the same salon. From such a basis court ife arose ; first in Italy and Spain, subsequently PRODUCTION OF TEE WORK OF ART. 137 in France, and afterwards in England, in Ger- many, and in the north of Europe. France was its centre, and Louis XIV. gave to it its princi- pal eddt. Let us study the effect of this new state of things on minds and characters. The king's salon is the first in the country, and is frequented by the most select society; the most admired personage, therefore, the accomplished man whom everybody accepts for a model, is the nobleman enjoying familiarity with his sovereign. This nobleman entertains generous sentiments; he believes himself of a superior race, and he says to himself, noblesse oblige. He is more sen- sitive than other men on the point of honor, and freely risks his life at the slightest insult. Under Louis XTTT. four thousand noblemen were killed in duels. Contempt of danger, in the eyes of this nobleman, is the first obligation of a soul nobly born. The dandy, the wordling, so choice of his ribbons, so careful of his perruque, ia ready to encamp in Flanders mud, and expose himself to bullets for hours together at Neer 138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AET. winden. When Luxembourg announces that he is about to give battle, Versailles is deserted ; all these young perfumed gallants hasten off to the army as if they were going to a ball. Finally, and through a remnant of the spirit of ancient feudalism, our nobleman regards the monarch as his natural legitimate chief: he knows he is bound to him, as the vassal formerly was to his suzerain, and at need will give him his blood, his property, and his life. Under Louis XVI. noble- men voluntarily placed themselves at the king's disposal, and on the 10th of August many were slain in his behalf. But they are nevertheless courtiers, that is to say, men of the world, and in this respect per- fectly polite. The King himself sets them an ex- ample. Louis XTV. even doffed his hat to a chambermaid, and the Memoirs of St. Simon mention a duke who saluted so frequently that he was obliged to cross the courts of Versailles bareheaded. The courtier, for the same reason, is accomplished in all that appertains to good breeding; language never fails him in difficult PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 139 circumstances ; he is a diplomat, master of him- self, an adept in the art of disguising, concealing, flattering and managing others, never giving of- fense, and often pleasing. AH these qualifica- tions and these sentiments proceed from an aris- tocratic spirit refined by the usages of society; they attain to perfection in this court and in this century. Anybody of the present time disposed to admire the choice flowers of this lost and deli- cate species need not look for them in our equal- ized, rude and mixed society, but must turn to the elegant, formal, monumental parterres in which they formerly flourished. You can imagine that people so constituted must have chosen pleasures appropriate to theii character. Their taste, indeed, like their per- sons, was noble ; for they were not only noble by birth, but also through their sentiments ; and correct because they were educated to practice and respect what was becoming to them. It was this taste which, in the seventeenth century, fash- ioned all their works of art the serious, elevated, severe productions of Poussin and Lesuenr, tlif 140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. grave, pompous, elaborate architecture of Maii- sart and Perrault, and the stately, symmetrical gardens of Le Notre. You mil find its traces in the furniture, costumes, house decoration, and carriages of the engravings and paintings of Perelle, Sebastian Leclerc, Bigaud, Nanteuil, and many others. Versailles, with its groups of well-bred gods, its symmetrical alleys, its mytho- logical water-works, its large artificial basins, its trimmed and pruned trees modeled into archi- tectural designs, is a masterpiece in this direc- tion ; all its edifices and parterres, everything be- longing to it, was constructed for men solicitous about their dignity, and strict observers of the recognized standard of social propriety. But the imprint is still more visible in the literature of the epoch. Never in France or in Europe has the art of fine writing been carried to such per- fection. The greatest of French authors, as you are aware, belong to this epoch Bossuet, Pascal, La Fontaine, Moliere, Corneille, Kacine, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Se'vigne, Boileau, La Bruyere, Bourdaloue, and others. Great men PRODUCTION OF TEE WORK OF ART. \\ not only wrote well, bat almost everybody; Courier asserted that a chambermaid of those days knew more about style than a modem academy. In fact, a good style at that time per- vaded the air, people unconsciously inhaling it ; it prevailed in correspondence and in conversa- tion ; the court taught it ; it entered into the ways of people of the world. The man who aimed to be polished and correct in deportment, got to be so likewise in the attributes of language and of style. Among so many branches of literature there is one, tragedy, which reached a singular degree of perfection, and which more than all the rest furnishes at that time the most striking ex- ample of the concordance which links together man and his works, manners and the arts. The general features of this tragedy first claim attention ; they are all calculated to please noble- men and members of the court. The poet does not fail in the blandishment of truth, which by its nature is often crude ; he allows no murders on the stage ; he disguises brutality and repudiates violence, such as blows, butcheries, yells, and 142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. groans, everything that might offend the senses of a spectator accustomed to moderation and the elegances of the salon. For the same reason he excludes disorder, never abandoning himself to the caprices of fancy and imagination like Shake- speare ; his plan is regular, he admits no unfore- seen incidents, no romantic poesy. He elaborates his scenes, explains entrances, graduates the in- terest of his piece, prepares the way for sudden turns of fortune, and skillfully anticipates and di- rects denouments. Finally, he diffuses through- out the dialogue, like a uniform brilliant varnish, a studied versification composed of the choicest terms and the most harmonious rhymes. If we seek the costume of this drama in the engravings of the time we find heroes and princesses appear- ing in furbelows, embroideries, bootees, swords and plumes a dress, in short, Greek in name, but French in taste and fashion; such as tho king, the dauphin, and the princesses paraded in, to ihe music of violins, at the court performances of ballets. Note, moreover, that all his personages are PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 143 courtiers, kings and queens, princes and prin- cesses of royal blood, ambassadors, ministers, officers of the guard, menins* dependents and confidants. The associates of princes are not here, as in ancient Greek tragedy, slaves of the palace and nurses born under their master's roof, but ladies-in-waiting, equerries, and gentlemen of the antechamber, charged with certain duties in the royal household ; we readily detect this in their conversational ability, in their skill in flat- tery, in their perfect education, in their exquisite deportment, and in their monarchical sentiments as subjects and vassals. Their masters, like themselves, are French noblemen of the seven- teenth century, proud and courteous, heroic in Corneille and noble in Bacine ; they are gallants with the ladies, faithful to their name and race, capable of sacrificing their dearest interests and strongest affections to their honor, and incapable of uttering a word or an act which the most rigid courtesy would not authorize. Iphigenia, in Ra - Foster-brother, school-companion, or other intimite of thit 144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. cine, delivered up by her father to her execu- tioners, does not regret life, weeping like a girl, as in Euripides, but thinks it her duty to obey her father and her king without a murmur, and to die without shedding a tear, because she is a princess. Achilles, who in Homer stamps, still unappeased, on the body of the dying Hector, feeling like a lion or wolf, as if he would "eat the raw flesh" of his vanquished antagonist, is, in Eacine, a Prince of Conde, at once brilliant and seductive, passionate concerning honor, de- voted to the fair, impetuous, it is true, and irrita- ble, but with the reserved vivacity of a young officer who, even when most excited, maintains good breeding and never stoops to brutality. All these characters are models of polite address, and show a knowledge of the world never at fault. Bead, in Racine, the first dialogue of Oreste and Pyrrkiis, and the whole of the part of Acomat and of Ulysse; nowhere is greater tact or oratorical dexterity apparent ; nowhere more in- genious compliments and flatteries, exordiums so well poised, such a quick revelation, such an in- PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 14.5 genious adjustment, such a delicate insinuation ol appropriate motives. The wildest and most im- petuous lovers Hippdyte, Britannicus, Pyrrhus, Oreste, and Xiphares are accomplished cavaliers who turn a madrigal and bow with the utmost deference. However violent their passions may be, Hermione, Andromaque, Roxane, and Berenice, preserve the tone of the best society. MUhridate, Phedre, and Athalie, when expiring, express them- selves in correct periods, for a prince has to be a prince to the last, and die in due form. This drama might be called a perfect picture of the fashionable world. Like Gothic architecture, it represents a positive complete side of the human mind, and this is why, like that, it has become so universal. It has been imported into, or imitated by, along with its accompanying taste, literature, and manners, every court of Europe in En- gland, after the restoration of the Stuarts; in Spain, on the advent of the Bourbons; and in Italy, Germany, and Russia, in the eighteenth century. "We are warranted in saying that at this epoch France was the educator of Europe ; 13 146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. she was the source from which was derived all that was elegant and agreeable, whatever was proper in style, delicate in ideas, and perfect in the art of social intercourse. If a savage Mus- covite, a dull German, a stolid Englishman, or any other uncivilized or half-civilized man of the North quit his brandy, pipe, and furs, his feudal or hunting or rural life, it was to French salons and to French books he betook himself, in order to acquire the arts of politeness, urbanity, and conversation. vm. THIS brilliant society did not last ; it was its own development which caused its dissolution. The government being absolute, ended in becom- ing negligent and tyrannical; and, besides this, the king bestowed the best offices and the great- est favor only on such of the nobles of his court as enjoyed his intimacy. This appeared unjust to the bourgeoisie and to the people, who, having greatly increased in numbers, wealth and intelli- gence, felt their power augment in proportion to the growth of their discontent. The French Rev- olution was accordingly their work ; and after ten years of trial they established a system of democ- racy and equality, in which, according to a fixed order of promotion, all civil employments were ordinarily accessible to everybody. The wars of the empire and the contagion of example grad- ually spread this system beyond the frontiers of Prance, and whatever may be local differences 148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMT. and temporary delays, it is now evident that the tendency of the whole of Europe is to imitate it. The new construction of society, coupled with the invention of industrial machinery, and the great abatement of rudeness in manners and customs, has changed the condition as well as the charac- ter of man. Henceforth, man is exempt from arbitrary measures, and is protected by a good police. However lowly born, all careers are open to him ; an enormous increase of useful ar- ticles places within reach of the poorest conven- iences and pleasures of which, two centuries ago, the rich were entirely ignorant. Again, the rigor of authority is mitigated, both in society and in the family ; a father is now the companion of his children, and the citizen has become the equal of the noble. Human life, in short, displays a lessei degree of misery, and a lighter degree of oppres- sion. But, as a counterpart of this, we see ambition and cupidity spreading their wings. Accustomed to comfort and luxuries, and obtaining here and there glimpses of happiness, man begins to regard PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. happiness and comfort as his due. The more he obtains, the more exacting he becomes, and the more his pretensions exceed his acquisitions. The practical sciences also having made great progress, and instruction being diffused, liberated thought abandons itself to all daring enterprises ; hence it happens that men, relinquishing the tra- ditions which formerly regulated their beliefs, deem themselves capable, through intellect alone, of attaining to the highest truths. Questions of every kind are mooted, moral, political and relig- ious ; men seek knowledge by groping their way in every direction. For fifty years past we behold this strange conflict of systems and sects, each tendering us new creeds and perfect theories of happiness. Such a state of things has a wonderful effect on minds and ideas. The representative man, that is to say, the character who occupies the stage, and to whom the spectators award the most interest and sympathy, is the melancholy, ambitious dreamer Rene, Faust, Werther and Manfred a yearning heart, restless, wandering 150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. and incurably miserable. Arid he is miserable for two reasons. In the first place he is over- sensitive, too easily affected by the lesser evils of life ; he has too great a craving for delicate and blissful sensations; he is too much accustomed to comfort ; he has not had the semi-feudal and semi-rustic education of our ancestors; he has not been roughly handled by his father, whipped at college, obliged to maintain respectful silence in the presence of great personages, and had his mental growth retarded by domestic discipline ; he has not been compelled, as in ancient times, to use his own arm and sword to protect himself, to travel on horseback, and to sleep in disagree- able lodgings. In the soft atmosphere of mod- ern comfort and of sedentary habits, he has be- come delicate, nervous, excitable, and less capa- ble of accommodating himself to the course of life which always exacts effort and imposes trouble. On the other hand, he is skeptical. Society and religion both being disturbed in the midst of a pele-mele of doctrines and an irruption of PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. Q3W theories his precocious judgment, too rap- idly instructed, and too soon unbridled, precipi- tates him early and blindly off the beaten track made smooth for his fathers by habit, and which they have trodden, led on by tradition and gov- erned by authority. All the barriers which served as guides to minds having fallen, he rushes forward into the vast, confusing field which is opened out before his eyes ; impelled by almost superhuman ambition and curiosity he darts off in the pursuit of absolute truth and infi- nite happiness. Neither love, glory, knowledge nor power, as we find these in this world, can satisfy him ; the intemperance of his desires, ir- ritated by the incompleteness of his conquests and by the nothingness of his enjoyments, leaves him prostrate amid the ruins of his own nature, without his jaded, enfeebled, impotent imagina- tion being able to represent to him the beyond which he covets, and the unknown ivhat which he has not. This evil has been styled the great malady of the age. Forty years ago it was in full force, and under the apparent frigidity or 152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AHT. gloomy impassibility of the positive mind of the present day it still subsists. I have not the time to show you the innumer' able effects of a like state of mind on works of art. You may trace them in the great develop- ment of the lyrical, sentimental and philosoph- ical poetry of France, Germany and England; again, in the corruption and enrichment of lan- guage and in the invention of new classes and of new characters in literature; in the style and sentiments of all the great modern writers, from Chateaubriand to Balzac, from Goethe to Heine, from Cowper to Byron, and from AMeri to Leo- pardi. You will find analogous symptoms in the arts of design if you will observe their feverish, tortured and painfully archeological style, their aim at dramatic effect, psychological expression, and local fidelity; if you observe the confusion which has befogged the schools and injured their processes ; if you pay attention to the countless gifted minds who, shaken by new emotions, have opened out new ways ; if you analyze the pro- found sympathy for scenery which has given fRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 155 birth to a complete and original landscape art But there is another art, Music, which has sud- denly reached an extraordinary development. This development is one of the salient character- istics of our epoch, and the dependence of this on the modern mind, the ties by which they are connected, I shall endeavor to point out to you. This art_was born, and necessarily, in two countries where people sing naturally, Italy and Germany. It was gestating for a century and a half in Italy, from Palestrina to Pergolese, as for- merly painting from Giotto to Massaccio, discov- ering processes and feelujg.jjjs. waj_ibj. .order to acquire its resources. At the commencement of the eighteenth century^ it suddenly burst forth, with Scarlatti, Marcello and JSandel. This is a most remarkable egoch^ Painting at this time ceased to flourish in Italy, and in the midst of political stagnation, voluptuous, effeminate cus- toms prevailed, furnishing an assembly of sigis- bes, Lindors and amorous ladies for the roulades and tender sentimental scenes of the opera. Grave, ponderous Germany, at that time the 154: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. latest in acquiring self-consciousness, now suo ceeds in displaying the severity and grandeur of its religious sentiment, its profound knowledge, and its vague melancholy instincts in the sacred music of Sebastian Bach, anticipating the evan- gelical epic of Klopstock. In the old and in the new nation the reign and expression of s&rdiment is beginning. Between the two, half-Germanic and half-Italian, is Austria, conciliating the two spirits, producing Haydn, Gluck and Mozart. Music now becomes cosmopolite and universal on the confines of that great mental convulsion of souls styled the French Revolution, as for- merly painting under the impulse of the great intellectual revival known under the name of the Renaissance. "We need not be astonished at the appearance of this new art, for it corres- ponds to the appearance of a new genius that of the ruling, morbid, restless, ardent character I have attempted to portray for you. It is to this spirit that Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Weber formerly addressed themselves, and to which Meyerbeer, Berlioz and Verdi are now striving to accommodate themselves. PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. 155 Music is the organ of this over-refined exces- sive sensibility and vague boundless aspiration ; it is expressly designed for this service, and no art so well performs its task. And this is so be- cause, on the one hand, music is founded on a more or less remote imitation of a cry which is the natural, spontaneous, complete expression of passion, and which, affecting us through a cor poreal stimulus, instantly arouses involuntarj sympathy, so that the tremulous delicacy of every nervous being finds in it its impulse, its echo, and its ministrant. On the other hand, founded on relationships of sounds which represent no living form, and which, especially in instrumental music, seem to be the reveries of an incorporeal soul, it is better adapted than any other art to express floating thoughts, formless dreams, ob- jectless limitless desires, the grandiose and dolor- ous mazes of a troubled heart which aspires to all and is attached to nothing. This is why, along with the discontent, the agitations, and the hopes of modern democracy, music has left its natal jonri trios and diffused itself Dver all Europe ; and 156 THS PHLL OSOPHY OF ART. why you see at the present time the most com plicated symphonies attracting crowds in France, where, thus far, the national music has been re- duced to the song and the melodies of the Vaude- ville. IX. THE foregoing illustrations, gentlemen, seem to me sufficient to establish the law governing the character and creation of works of art. And not only do they establish it, but they accurately de- fine it. In the beginning of this section I stated that the work of art is determined by an aggregate which is the general state of the mind and surround- ing manners. We may now advance another step, and note precisely in their order each link of the chain, connecting together cause and effect. In the various illustrations we have considered, yon have remarked first, a general situation, in other words, a certain universal condition of good or evil, one of servitude or of liberty, a state of wealth or of poverty, a particular form of society, a certain species of religious faith ; in Greece, the free martial city, with its slaves ; in the middle ages, feudal oppression, invasion and brigandage, and an exalted phase of Christianity ; the court 4 158 THE PHILOSOPHY CF ART. life of the seventeenth century ; the industrial and studied democracy of the nineteenth, guided by the sciences ; in short, a group of circumstances controlling man, and to which he is compelled to resign himself. This situation develops in man corresponding needs, distinct aptitudes and special sentiments physical activity, a tendency to reverie; here rudeness, and there refinement ; at one time a martial instinct, at another conversational talent, at another a love of pleasure, and a thousand other complex and varied peculiarities. In Greece we see physical perfection and a balance of faculties which no manual or cerebral excess of life deranges ; in the middle ages, the intem- perance of over-excited imaginations and the deli- cacy of feminine sensibility ; in the seventeenth century, the polish and good-breeding of society and the dignity of aristocratic salons; and in modern times, the grandeur of unchained ambi- tions and the morbidity of unsatisfied yearnings. New, this ^oup of^fintimentaj npfoifarlft and neo!s, constitutes, when concentrated in one jger- PRODUCTION OP THE WORK OF ART. BOB and powerfully displayed by him, the r&present* ative wan^ that te to s^^ whom his contemporaries award all their adrnira^ tion and all their sympathy; there is, .jfor._Jn^ stance, iiTGreece, the naked youth t of a fine^race and accomplished in all bodily exercise : in...tbja. _ * ____ ..^^jfc^'""^"*^^'***''**' middle ages, the ecstatic monk^and i Jh,Q.8)m.Qri)us knight; in the seventeenth century, the perfect, courtier ; and in our days, the melanchojy i ble Faust or Werthur. Moreover, as this personage is the most capti- vating, the most important and the most conspic- uous of all, it is he whom artists present to the public, now concentrated in an ideal personage, when their art, like painting, sculpture, the drama, the romance or the epic, is imitative ; now, dis- persed in its elements, as in architecture and in music, where art excites emotions without incar- nating them. All their labor, therefore, may be summed up as follows : they either represent this character, or address themselves to it ; the sym- phonies of Beethoven and the "storied windows" of cathedrals are addressed to it ; and it Is repre- 160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. sented in the Niobe group of antiquity and in the Agamemnon and Achilles of Racine. All art, therefore, depends on it, since the whole of art is applied only to conform to, or to express it. A general situation, provoking tendencies and special faculties ; a representative man, embody- ing these predominant tendencies and faculties sounds, forms, colors, or language giving this character sensuous form, or which comport with the tendencies and faculties comprising it, such are~the four terms of the series ; the first carries witliirtne second, the second the third, and the third the fourth, so that the slightest variation of either involves a corresponding variation in those that follow, and reveals a corresponding variation in those that precede it, permitting abstract rea- soning in either direction in an ascending or de- scending scale of progression.* As far as I am capable of judging, this formula embraces every- thing. If, now, we insert between these diverse * This law may be applied to the study of all literatures and to every art The student may begin with the fourth term, pro. ceeding from this to the firs*, strictly adhering to the order of the PRODUCTION OF THE WORK OF ART. l(jl terms the accessory causes occurring to modify their effects if, in order to explain the senti- ments of an epoch, we add an examination of race to that of the social medium ; if, in order to explain the works of art of any age ; we consider, besides the prevailing tendencies of that age, the particular period of the art, and the particular sentiments of each artist, we shall then derive from the law not only the great revolutions and general forms of man's imagination, but, again, the differences between national schools, the in- cessant variations of various styles, and the orig- inal characteristics of the works of every great master. Thus followed out, such an explanation will be complete, since it furnishes at once the general traits of each school, and the distinctive traits which, in this school, characterize individ- uals. "We are about to enter upon this study in relation to Italian art; it is a long and difficult task, and I have need of your attentior in ordei to pursue it to the end. X. BEFOEE proceeding further, gentlemen, there la a practical and personal conclusion due to our researches, and which is applicable to the pres- ent order of things. You have observed that each situation pro- duces a certain state of mind followed by a cor- responding class of works of art. This is why every new situation must produce a new state of mind, and consequently a new class of works ; and therefore why the social medium of the present day, now in the course of formation, ought to produce its own works like the social mediums that have gone before it. This is not a simple supposition based on the current of desire and of hope ; it is the result of a law resting on the authority of experience and on the testimony of history. From the moment a law is estab- lished it is good for all time ; the connections of things in the present, accompany connections oi PRODUCTION OF THE VORK OF ART. things in the past and in the future. Accordingly, it need not be said in these days that art is ex- hausted. It is true that certain schools no longer exist and can no longer be revived ; that certain arts languish, and that the future upon which we are entering does not promise to furnish the aliment that these require. But art itself, which is the faculty of perceiving and expressing the leading character of objects, is as enduring as the civilization of which it is the best and earliest fruit. What its forms will be, and which of the five great arts will provide the vehicle of expres- sion of future sentiment, we are not called upon to decide ; we have the right to affirm that new forms will arise, and an appropriate mould be found in which to cast them. We have only to open our eyes to see a change going on in the condition of men, and consequently in their minds, so profound, so universal, and so rapid that no other century has witnessed the like of it. The three causes that have formed the modern mind continue to operate with increasing efficacy. You are all aware that discoveries in ike positive TSE PHILOSOPHY OF AMI. sciences are multiplying daily ; that geology, organic chemistry, history, entire branches of physics and zoology, are contemporary produc- tions ; that the growth of experience is infinite, and the applications of discovery unlimited ; that means of communication and transport, cultiva- tion, trade, mechanical contrivances, all the ele- ments of human power, are yearly spreading and concentrating beyond all expectation. None of you are ignorant that the political machine works smoother in the same sense ; that communities, becoming more rational and humane, are watch- ful of internal order, protecting talent, aiding the feeble and the poor; in short, that everywhere, and in every way, man is cultivating his intellect- ual faculties and ameliorating his social condi- tion. We cannot accordingly deny that men's habits, ideas and condition transform themselves, nor reject this consequence, that such renewal of minds and things brings along with it a renewal of art. The first period of this evolution gave rise to the glorious French school of 1830 ; it re mains for us to witness the second- -the field THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. which is open to your ambition and your labor. On its very threshold, you have a right to augur well of your century and of yourselves ; for the patient study we have just terminated shows you that to produce beautiful works, the sole condi- tion necessary is that which the great Goethe in- dicated: "Fill your mind and large, with the ideas and sentiments of your and the work will follow." THE IDEAL IN ART NOTICE. "THE IDEAL IN ART," forms the substance of two lectures, delivered during the past year to the students of the Ecde des Beaux-At-ts, in Paris, by M. TAINE, Professor of the History of Art in that institution. The subject is treated in accord- ance with the principles laid down by this dis- tinguished writer in "The Philosophy of Art," the theory of which it may be said to complete. DEDICATED TO M. SAINTE-BEUVE, SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS PACK. Object and method of the treatise Sense of die term ideal 179 I. All characters, apparently, are of equal value Logical reasons Historical reasons Various modes of treating the same subject The miser, the father, and the lover in literature Among paintings, Rembrandt's and Vero- nese's "Last Supper," Raphael's and Rubens' mytho- logical subjects, and the " Ledas " of Da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Corrggio Absolute value of all notable characters ..... 181 n. Value, more or less great, of various works The con- cordance of tastes and definite judgment of posterity on several points The authority of these verdicts confirmed by the way in which opinion is established Final con- firmation given through the modern processes of criticism There are laws determining the value of a work of art 193 HI. Definition of the work of art The two conditions which it must fulfill Value, more or less great, of works of art, according as these two conditions are more or less fulfilled Application of this to the arts of imitation How, and under what restrictions the same rule is applied to the arts which do not imitate . . 197 THE DKGREK or IMPORTANCE OF THE CHARACTWL In what the importance of character consists The princi- ple of the subordination of characters in the natural 174 SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. PACK sciences The most important character is the least variable Examples in botany and in geology It brings, and bears off with it, more important and less variable characters Examples in zoology It is less variable be- cause it is more elementary Examples in zoology and in botany ...... 201 n. Application of the principle to the moral man Means of determining the order of the subordination of characters in the moral man Degree of their variability measured by history Order of their stability Transient and fash- ionable characters Examples Characters which last a semi-historic period Examples Characters which last a full historic period Examples Characters which last the life of a people Examples Characters common to people of the same stock Characters common to the highest humanity The most stable characters are the most elementary Examples . . . .210 ill. The scale of literary values corresponds to this scale of moral values Transient and fashionable literature Current literature. The "Astr6e," the "Cle'lie," the "Euphues," the "Adone," "Hudibras," and "Atala." Proof and counter-proof of the law Superior isolated works among inferior works of the same author: "Gil Bias," " Manon Lescaut," "Don Quixote," and " Robin- son Crusoe." Inferior parts in the work of a superior writer, as the marquises of Racine, and Shal espeare's downs and cavaliers The stability and profundity of characters manifested by great literary works Proof de- rived from the modern use of literary productions in history Hindoo poems, Spanish romances, and dramatic works, the drama of Racine, and the epics of Dante and Goethe Universality of characters expressed by certain works The "Psalms," the "Imitation of Christ," Homer, Plato, and Shakespeare "Robinson Crusoe," "Candide," and "Don Quixote." . . .226 iv. Application of the same principle to the physical man Highly variable characters in the physical man Fashion- able dress Dress in general Peculiarities of profession SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 175 MOB and condition The imprint of historical epochs Inade- quacy of history to measure the variability of physical characters Substitution of the elementary character for the stable character Profound and intimate characteris- tics of the physical man The system of muscles The vitalized skin Diversities of race and temperament . 241 v. The scale of plastic values corresponds to the scale of physical values Works representing the dress of the day, and dress in general Works manifesting historical peculiarities of profession, condition, character, and epoch Hogarth and the English painters The epochs of Italian painting The age of infancy The age of maturity The age of decline Works here are more or less perfect according as the sentiment of physical life is more or less dominant The law the same in other schools Diverse races and temperaments expressed by diverse schools The Florentine type, the Venetian type, the Flemish type, the Spanish type ... 248 vi Conclusion The character communicates to the work its degree of importance ..... 260 11. THE DEGREE OF BENEFICENCE IN THE CHARACTER. i. Relationship and distinction between the two points of view In what the beneficence of a moral character con- sists In the individual Intelligence and Will In society The power of Love Order of beneficent values in moral character ..... 265 ii. Corresponding order of literary values Types of realistic or comic literature Examples Henri Monnier The picaresque romances Balzac Fielding Walter Scott Moliere Processes employed by great writers to remedy the inadequacy of infe-ior personages Types of dramatic and philosophic literature Shakespeare and Balzac Types of epic and popular literature Heroes and Gods 273 OI. Order of beneficent values in physical character Health The natural type in its integrity Athletic aptitudes 176 8YNOP8I8 OF CONTENTS. FA3B. and gymnastic preparation The indication of moral nobility Limits within which the plastic arts may ex- press the life of the spirit .... 286 IV Corresponding order of plastic values Unhealthy, de- formed, or morbid types Antique sculpture during the decadence Byzantine art Mediaeval art Types healthy, but still imperfect, vulgar, or coarse The Italian painters of the fifteenth century Rembrandt The minor Flemings Rubens Superior types The Venetian masters The Florentine masters The masters of Athens ..... 291 V. Conclusion The importance and beneficence of charac- ters in nature considered Superior harmonies of nature and of art . . . . . 307 111. THE CONVERGING DEGREE OF EFFECTS. I. The various elements of the literary work Character- Its elements Action Its elements Style It elements General convergence of character, action and style ...... 312 II. The different moments of a literary period are determined by the preceding law Commencement of literary ages Incomplete convergence arising from ignorance The "chansons de Geste" Early Engh'sh dramatists The end of literary ages Incomplete convergence through incongruities Euripides and Voltaire The centre of literary ages Complete convergence Mschylna Racine Shakespeare ..... 324 III. The various elements of a plastic work The body and its elements The architecture of lines and its elements Coloring and its elements How all elements may converge .... . 333 IV. The various moments of the history of art are determined by the preceding law Primitive epochs Incomplete convergence through ignorance The symbolic and mystic schools of Italy Giotto The realist and anatom- SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. 177 HMH ical painters of Italy The precursors of Da Viaci Epochs of decadence Incomplete convergence through incongruities The Caracci and their successors in Italy The imitators of the Italian style in Flanders Floor* ishing epochs Complete convergence Da Vinci The Venetians Raphael Correggio Universality of the law . 343 Summary Principle of excellence and of subordination in works of art . . . 3' ON THE IDEAL IN ART. GENTLEMEN: IT seems as if the subject to which I am about to claim your attention could only be treated through poesy. In regard to the JLdeal it is the heart which speaks ; we then think of the vague and beautiful dream by which is expressed the deepest sentiment ; we scarcely breathe it in the lowest voice, with a kind of subdued enthusiasm ; when we speak of it otherwise it is in verse, in a canticle ; we dwell on it reverentially, with clasped hands, as if it concerned happiness, heaven, or love. As to ourselves, we shall, aa usual, study it as naturalists, that is, methodic- ally, analytically, and shall endeavor to realize aot an ode but a law. 180 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. At first we must understand this word the IdeoL The grammatical explanation of it is not difficult. Let me recall the definition of a work of art which we gave at the beginning of this course.* On that occasion we said that the aim of a work of art was to make known some lead- ing and important character more effectually and clearly than objects themselves do. For that purpose the artist forms for himself an idea of that character, and according to his idea he transforms the actual object. This object thus transformed is found to conform to tJie idea, or, in other words, to the ideal. Things thus pass from the real to the ideal when the artist re- produces them by modifying them according to his idea, and he modifies them according to his idea when, conceiving and eliminating from them some notable character, he systematically changes the natural relationships of their parts in order to render this character more apparent and pow- erful See the Philosophy of Art, page 61. ON THE IDEAL IN ART. Among the ideas which artists impart to their models are there any which take the lead oi others? Can we point out any one character which is superior to all the others ? Is there for each object an ideal form outside of which all is deviation or error? Can we discover a princi- ple of subordination by which to assign rank to the diverse productions of art ? At the first glance we are tempted to say, no ; the definition which we have given seems to bar the way to this investigation ; it leads one to believe that all the works of art are on a level, and that the scope of art is an open question. In short, if the object becomes ideal in that it is alone conformable to the idea, the idea is of little consequence; the choice lies with the artist ; he will choose this or that according to his taste ; we shall have no claim on him. The same subject may be treated in this form or in another, or in all intermediate forms. Better 182 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. still, it seems that here history is in keeping with logic, and that theory is in conformity with the facts. Let us consider different centuries, different nations and different schools. Artists differing in race, in mind and in education, are differently impressed by the same object ; each one sees it from his own point of view ; each one perceives in it a distinct character; each one forms for himself an original idea of it, and this idea, manifested in the new work, immedi- ately stands forth a new masterpiece in the gal- lery of ideal forms, like a new divinity in an Olym- pus heretofore regarded as complete. Plautus places the poor miser Euclion on the stage ; Mo- liere takes up the same personage also, and places there the rich miser Harpagon. Two centuries later the miser, not stupid and taunted as formerly, but redoubtable and triumphant, be- comes old Grandet in the hands of Balzac, and the same miser taken from the provinces and becoming Parisian, cosmopolite and a drawing- room poet, furnishes the same Balzac the usurer Gobseck. One situation alone, that of a fathei ON TUB IDEAL Ltf ART. 183 maltreated by his ungrateful children, suggested the (Edipus of Sophocles, Shakespeare's King Lear and Balzac's Pere Goriot. Every romance and every drama represents some young man and young woman in love with each other and anxious to be married; under how many dif- ferent forms have this same couple been pre- sented from Shakespeare to Dickens and from Madame de Lafayette to George Sand. The lo\ers, the father, the miser, all the great types can therefore be always reproduced ; they have been so uninterruptedly and will still continue to be so, and it is truly the appropriate and sole glory, the hereditary necessity of true genius to create such characters outside of the conven- tional and traditional order of things. If, after literary productions, we regard the arts of design, the right of selecting at will this or that character appears to be still better founded. A dozen or so of evangelical or mytho- logical subjects or personages have been equal to the wants of high art; the arbitrary will of the artist declares itself here not only by a di- ] 84 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. versity of works, but by complete success. We dare not praise one more than another, we dare not place one perfect work above another, we dare not say that we should follow Rembrandt rather than Veronese, or Veronese rather than Rembrandt. And yet what a contrast ! In the "Feast of Emmaus"* the Christ of Rembrandt is a resuscitated, cadaverous, sallow, and dolor- ous figure, who has experienced the chill of the grave, and whose sad and benignant look fixes itself once more on human misery. Near tc this figure are two disciples, old worn-out labor- ers with bald and blanched heads, seated at the table of a common inn, a little stable-boy looking on with a vacant air, while around the head of the revived Redeemer shines the pe- culiar radiance of the other world. In the " Christ of the Hundred Florins" the same idea reappears more vividly. This, indeed, is the Christ of the people, the Saviour of the poor, * See this picture in the Louvre ; the engraved sketch is lomewhat different ON TEE IDEAL IN ART 185 standing in one of those Flemish caverns, where the Lollards once prayed and wove; ragged mendicants and hospital outcasts extend toward him their suppliant hands : a coarse peasant- woman, kneeling, looks at him with the staring and fixed eyes of deep faith; a paralytic is brought stretched across a barrow tattered clothes, old greasy mantles faded by exposure, scrofulous and deformed bodies, pale, wan, bru- talized faces, a sorrowful mass of ugliness and disease, a sort of human sty which the favored of the age, fat citizens and a corpulent burgo- master, gaze on with insolent indifference, but over which the benignant Christ stretches Hia healing hands whilst His supernatural light penetrates the shadows, and radiates even to the dripping walls. If poverty, sadness, and gloom, flecked with vague lights, have furnished masterpieces ; wealth, mirth, and the warm and beaming light of open day furnish kindred mas- terpieces. Look at the three feasts of Christ by Veronese, at Venice and in the Louvre. The open sky expands above an architecture of balus 186 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. trades, colonnades, and statues ; glittering white- ness, and the surfaces of variegated marbles, frame an assemblage of lords and ladies enjoying a feast, a Venetian public banquet of the sixteenth century; Christ sits in the centre, and in long rows around Him, nobles in silken pourpoints, princesses in brocade robes eat and laugh, while greyhounds, negroes, dwarfs, and mu- sicians attract the eyes or the ears of the at- tendant company. Simarres, woven with black and silver, undulate by the side of velvet skirts embroidered with gold ; collars of lace encircle the satiny whiteness of necks ; pearls gleam on blonde tresses ; blooming carnations lead one to divine the force of youthful blood flowing easily and in full veins ; intelligent and vivacious faces are on the verge of a smile, while upon the sil- very or rosy lustre of the general tint golden yellows, deep blues, intense scarlet, rayed greens and broken and uniform tones complete, in their elegant and exquisite harmony, the poesy of this aristocratic and voluptuous display. On the other hand what is there better deter- ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 187 mined than the pagan Olympus? Greek statu- ary and literature have clearly defined all ita contours ; it seems that, in its place, every inno- vation was prohibited, every form fixed, and all invention circumscribed. And yet each painter, in transferring it to his canvas, makes a charac- ter predominate there hitherto unrecognized. The "Parnassus" of Kaphael offers to the eye lovely young women of a sweetness and grace perfectly human ; an Apollo who, with heaven- ward eyes, is lost in listening to the sound of his own lyre ; a symmetrical architecture of chaste harmonious forms, modest nudities which the sober and almost dull tone of the fresco renders still more modest. With opposite char- acters Rubens repeats the same work. Nothing is less antique than his mythology. In his hands Greek divinities have become Flemish bodies with a sanguine and lymphatic pulpiness, and his celestial banquets resemble the masques which, at the same epoch, Ben Jonson arranged for the court of James I. : bold nudities doubly anhanced by the splendor of falling draperies; 188 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. fat, white Venuses holding captive their lovers with a courtezan's abandoned air ; arch and sly Ceres in smiles ; plump and palpitating backs of writhing sirens ; mellow and extended inflexions of the pliant, living muscle ; the fury of trans- port, the impetuosity of desire, the sumptuous display of an unbridled and conquering sensu- ality, which the temperament feeds, which is unchecked by conscience, which becomes poetic in remaining animal, and, through an unusual concurrence, merges in its pleasures all the im- munities of nature and all the pomp of civili- zation. The culminating point is here again reached ; "lusty good humor" surrounds and pervades all ; " the wings of this Flemish Titan were so strong that he rose upward to the sun, although quintals of Dutch cheese hung to his legs."* If, finally, instead of comparing two artists of a different race, you restrict yourselves to the same nation, revert to the Italian works that I Heine's ReisebMer, voL i., p. 154. ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 1S9 have described to you, namely, the Crucifixions, the Nativities, the Annunciations, the Madonnas and Infants, the Jupiters, the Apollos, the Ve- nuses and the Dianas ; and, in order to render your impressions clear, to the same scene treated by three masters, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Correggio. I refer to their "Ledas," the three engravings of which you are, at least, familiar with. The " Leda" of Da Vinci is erect, modest, the eyes downcast, and the sinuous, serpentine lines of her beautiful body undulate with a regal and subtle elegance ; with a conju- gal turn, the swan, almost human, envelopes her with his wing, and the little pair nestling along- side of her have the oblique eye of that bird; nowhere is the mystery of ancient days, the profound relation between man and animal, the vague pagan and philosophic sentiment of the unity and universality of life expressed with more accurate research, and disclosing the div- inations of a more penetrating and comprehen- sive genius. The " Leda" of Michael Angelo, on the contrary, is a queen of a colossal and nrli- 190 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. tant race, a sister of those sublime virgins whc slumber, exhausted, in the chapel of the Medi- cis, or awake painfully to commence again the struggle of life ; her large, elongated form has the same muscles and the same structure ; her cheeks are sunken ; there is not the faintest trace in her of joy or abandonment ; even in a moment like this she is grave, almost sombre. The tragic soul of Michael Angelo puts motion into those athletic limbs, throws back that heroic torso, and renders rigid that fixed look beneath that frowning brow. The age changes, and virile sentiments give place to feminine sentiments. With Correggio the scene becomes a bath of young girls under the soft green shade of the trees, and amidst the gentle flow of a rippling and murmuring stream. Every thing is both seductive and attractive; complete voluptuous- ness, the happy dream, the sweet grace, never ex- panded or moved the soul by a more penetrating and effective language. The beauty of form and of head is not noble, but lovely and endearing. Full and smiling, with the lustre of satin, with ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 191 ^40 brilliancy of flowers lit up by the sun, the 'jloom of the most blooming youth enhances tho delicate whiteness of their flesh impregnated with light. One, blonde, complacent, with th equivocal torso and hair of a youth, chases away the swan; another, arch and pretty, holds the chemise into which her companion enters, while the aerial tissue which lightly covers her scarcely veils the full contours of her lovely form ; others, frolicsome, with low brows, large lips, and promi- nent chins, play in the water with an abandon- ment at once riotous and enticing. Still more abandoned, and content to be so, Leda smiles and yields ; and thus the intoxicating exquisite sensation which is derived from the whole scene overflows in her ecstasy and transport. Which is to be preferred ? And which is the superior character, the charming grace of exces- sive happiness, the tragic grandeur of haughty energy, or the depth of intelligent and refined sympathy ? All correspond to some essential portion of human nature, or to some essential moment of human development. Joy and sad- 192 ON TEE IDEAL IN ART. ness, sound reason and mystic revery, active energy or refined sensibility, lofty aspirations of the restless intellect and the broad expansion of animal delight, all the important parts in the province of life have their value. Centuries and entire nations have been engaged in bring- ing them to light ; what history has manifested art takes up, and, as the various natural crea- tures, whatever may be their structure and their instincts, find their place in the world and an explanation in science, so the various works of the human imagination, whatever may be the principle which animates them, and the direc- tion which they manifest, find their justification in discriminating sympathy and their place in art ON THE IDEAL IN ART 193 n. And yet in the imaginary world as in the real world there are different degrees because there are different values. The public and connois- seurs determine some and estimate others. We have done nothing but this for three years in traversing five centuries of Italian painting. We have always, and at every step, pronounced judgment. Without knowing it we held a measuring instrument in our hands. ^HherjEoen do as wo do, and iu criticism, as elsewhere, there are ascertained truths. Every man now recog- nizes that certain poets like Dante and Shakes- peare, certain composers like Mozart and Beeth- oven occupy the highest places in their art. Among all the writers of our century this place is given to Goethe. Among the Flemings, every one awards it to Rubens ; among the Dutch to Rembrandt ; among the Germans to Albert Durer ; among the Venetians to Titian. Three artists of the Italian renaissance, Leonardo da 194 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. Yinci, Michael Angelo and Baphael, rise, by unanimous consent, above all the rest. More- over, these definitive Judgments which posterity pronounces are confirmed in their justice by the way in which they are rendered. In the first place the contemporaries of the artist unite to judge him, and this judgment, in which so many differing minds, temperaments, and educations have concurred, is important, because the in- adequacy of each individual taste has been supplemented by the diversities of others' tastes ; prejudices, coming in conflict with each other are balanced, and this continuous and mutual compensation gradually brings the final result nearer to the truth. This done, another cen- tury continues the work in a new vein, and then after this, another; each revises the litigated point, each doing it from his own point of view ; all are so many profound rectifications and powerful combinations. When the work, after thus having passed from court to court issues from them, determined in the same manner, and the judges, stationed along the line of centuries ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 195 agree in the same verdict, the sentence, proba- bly, is just; for, if the work were not superior, it would not have drawn together so many dif ferent sympathies in such a decision. If the limitation of mind peculiar to epochs and to nations leads them sometimes, like individuals, to judge and comprehend badly, here, as in the case of individuals, the aberrations being rec- tified and the deviations being annulled by each other, they tend gradually to that state of fixity and of rectitude, in which opinion is found so well and legitimately established, that we may adhere to it with confidence and with reason. In addition, in fine, to this conformity of instinc- tive tastes the modern processes of criticism come to add the authority of science to that oi common sense. A critic is now aware that his personal taste has no value, that he must set aside his temperament, inclinations, party, and interests ; that, above all, his talent lies in sym- pathy, that his first essay in history should con- sist in putting himself in the place of the men whom he is desirous of judging, to entoi into 196 ON THE IDEAL IN ART their instincts and habits, to espouse their senti- ments, to re-think their thoughts, to reproduce within himself their inward condition, to repre- sent to himself minutely and substantially their surroundings, to follow in imagination the cir- cumstances and the impressions which, added to their innate tendency, have determined their actions and guided their lives. Such a course, in placing us at an artistic point of view, permits us better to comprehend them ; and as it is com- posed of analysis, it is, like every scientific ope- ration, capable of verification and perfectibility. By following this method we have been able to approve and disapprove of this or that artist, to condemn one and praise another part of the same work, to determine the nature of values, to point out progress or decline, to recognize pe- riods of bloom and decay, not arbitrarily, but according to a common criterion. It is this hidden criterion that I am going to try to dis- close, to define, and to demonstrate to you. ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 197 m. Let us consider, to this end, the various parts of the definition which we have given. To give full prominence to a leading character is the ob- ject of a work of art. It is owing to this that the closer a work of art approaches this point the more perfect it becomes ; in other words the more exactly and completely these conditions are complied with the more elevated it becomes on the scale. Two of these conditions are nec- essary ; it is necessary that the character should be the most notable possible and the most dom- inant possible. Let us study closely these two artistic obligations. In order to abridge our labor I will examine only the arts of imitation, sculp- ture, dramatic music, painting and literature, and principally the two last. That will suffice ; for you know the link which binds together the arts that imitate and the arts that do not imi- tate!* Both seek to render dominant some nota- ble character. Both succeed by employing an See the Philosophy of Art, chap. v. p. 62. 198 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. ensemble of connected parts, the relationships of which they combine or modify. The only dif- ference is that the arts of imitation, painting, sculpture, and poesy, reproduce organic and^ moral connections and form works correspond^ big to real objects, whilst the other arts, music properly so called and architecture, combine mathematical relationships so as to create works that do not correspond to real objects. But a symphony, a temple thus constituted are living beings like a written poem or a painted figure ; for they are also organized beings, all the parts of which are mutually dependent and governed by a guiding principle ; they also possess a physiognomy, they also manifest an intention, they also speak through expression, they also terminate in an effect. Under all these headings they are ideal creations of the same order as the others, subjected to the same laws of formation as to the same rules of criticism ; they are only a distinct group in the entire class, and, with a restriction known by anticipation, the truths which are alongside of them are applied to them. 1. THE DEGKEE OF IMPORTANCE OF THE CHARACTER ON T11K IDEAL IN ART. 201 What, then, is a notable character, and how at first, can we know, two characters being given, if one is more important than the other ? We find ourselves carried back by this question into the domain of science ; for the question here is of beings in themselves, and it rightly belongs to the sciences to take account of the characters composing this class of beings. We are obliged to make an excursion into natural history ; I will not apologize to you for so doing ; if the matter seems, at first, to be dry and ab- stract let us overlook it. The relationship exist- big between art and science is asjipnprable for the one as for the other ; it is the glory of the latter to give to beauty its principal adjuncts ; it is the glory of the former to base its noblest structures on the truth. It is about a hundred years since the natural sciences discovered the law of valuation which we aio about to borrow from them; namely, the 202 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. principle of tine, subordination of characters ; all the classifications of botany and of zoology have been constructed according to it, and its im- portance has been demonstrated by discoveries as unexpected as profound. In a plant, and in an animal, certain characters have been recog- nized as more important than others; these are the least variable characters. In this respect they possess a force greater than that of others.^ for they better bear up against the attack in every circumstance, internal or external, which might undo or vary them. For example, in a plant, shape and size are less important than structure ; for, inwardly, certain accessory char- acters, and, outwardly, certain accessory condi-_ tions, cause shape and size to vary without affecting Che structure. The pea that cling* to the earth, and the acacia that shoots up into the air, are closely-related leguminosse; a stem of wheat three feet high, and a bamboo of thirty feet, are kindred graminse; the same fern, so diminutive in our climate, becomes a large tree in the tropics. In like manner, also in one of ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 203 the vertebrata, the number, the arrangement, and the functions of members, are less important than the possession of mammae. It may bo aquatic, terrestrial, aerial, and undergo all the changes which a change of locality comports, without, on that account, the structure which renders it capable of suckling being altered or destroyed. The bat and the whale are mam- malia, like the dog, the horse, and man. The formative forces which have drawn out the mem- bers of the bat, and changed his hands into wings ; which have joined, shortened, and almost effaced the posterior members of the whale, have not had any effect, in one case or in the othei; on the organ which gives to the young its food and the flying mammal like the swimming mam- mal remain brothers of the mammal that walks. Thus is it with the whole scale of beings, and with the whole scale of characters. Such an organic arrangement is a more onerous weight, because forces capable of moving a lesser one fail in doing BO. Consequently, when one of these masses is 204 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. disturbed, it carries along with it corresponding masses. In other words, one character brings and bears away with it characters all the more invariable and the more important, because it is more invariable and more important itself. For example, the presence of the wing, being a very subordinate character, carries with it but very slight modifications, and remains without effect on the general structure. Animals of a different class may possess wings ; alongside of birds are winged mammalia like bats, winged lizards like the ancient ptero-dactyl and flying fishes like the exocetus. Indeed, the arrange- ment which renders an animal able to fly is of so little consequence, that it is met with even in different orders ; not only do many of the verte- brata have wings, but, again, many of the articu- lata; and, on the other hand, this power is so little important that it is in turn present or ab- sent in the same class ; five families of insects fly, and one, that of the aptera does not fly. On the contrary, the presence of mammae, being a very important character, bears with it important ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 205 modifications and in its principal traits deter- mines the structure of the animal. All the mam- mifers belong to the same division ; as soon as a mammifer appears, it is necessarily one of the vertebrata. Moreover, the presence of mammae is always accompanied by a double circulation, viviparous birth, and a membranous lining of the lungs which the rest of the vertebrata, birds, rep- tiles, fishes, and amphibious organisms, exclude. In general read the name of a class, of a family, of any order of natural beings ; the name which expresses the essential character shows you the organic feature selected as its sign. Then read the two or three lines following it : you will therein find enumerated a series of characters which are for the former inseparable accom- paniments, and whose importance and number measure the grandeur of the masses which come and go along with it. If now we attempt to get at the reason which gives superior importance and invariability to certain characters it will generally be found in what follows : in a living being there are two 206 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. parts, the elements and their combination ; the combination is ulterior while the elements are primitive ; we may derange the combination without affecting the elements ; we cannot altei the elements without deranging the combination. We must accordingly distinguish two sorts of characters, some profound, innate, original, fun- damental, which are those of the elements or materials; the others superficial, external, de- rived and superposed, those of combination or arrangement. Such is the principle of the most fruitful theory of the natural sciences, that of analogy, by which Geoffrey St. Hi- laire has explained the structure of animals and Goethe the structure of plants. In the skeleton of an animal it is necessary to point out two series of characters, the one which com- prises the anatomical elements and their con- nexions, the other comprehending their elonga- tions, their contractions, their jointures and their adaptation to this or that function. The former are primitive and the latter are derived ; tLo same articulations with the same relation- ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 207 ships appear in the arm of man, in the wing of the bat, in the vertebral column of the horse, in the leg of the cat and in the fin of a whale ; elsewhere, as in the slow-worm and the boa-con- strictor, parts become useless, subsist in a rudi- mentary state, and these being conserved, as well as the unity of the plan being maintained, bear witness to the elementary forces which all subsequent transformations have been unable to abolish. In the same manner it has been shown that, primitively and fundamentally, all the parts of a flower are leaves; and this distinction of two natures, the one essential, the other acces- sory, has accounted for abortions, monstrosities, analogies, as numerous as obscure, by opposing the inner web of the living tissue to the folds, seams and amplifications which go to hide and diversify it. A general rule proceeds from these partial manifestations, seeing that in order to unravel the most important character, we must consider being in its origin or in its constituents ; to observe it in its simplest form as is the case in embryogeny, or to mark distinctive characters 208 OJV THE IDEAL IN ART. which are common to its elements, as is done in anatomy and general physiology. In short it is according to the characters furnished by the em- bryo, or according to the mode of development common to all the parts, that the immense body of plants is now classified ; these two characters are of such great importance that they mutually involve each other, and contribute, both of them, to establish the same classification. According as the embryo is, or is not provided with small primitive leaves ; according as it possesses one or two of these leaves it takes its place in one of the three divisions of the vegetable kingdom. If it has two of these leaves its stem is formed of concentric layers, and harder in the centre than at the circumference ; its root is supplied by the primary axis, and its floral verticils are com- posed, almost always, of two or five pieces, or of their multiples. If it has but one of these leaves its stem is formed of scattered groups and is found softer in the centre than at the cir- cumference its root is supplied by the secondary axis, and its floral verticils are composed almost OX THE IDEAL IN ART. 2U ( J always of three pieces or of their multiples. Correspondences as general and as stable are met with in the animal kingdom ; and the con- clusion which, at the end of their labor, the natural sciences bequeath to the moral sciences is that characters are more or less important according as they are forces more or less great ; that the measure of their force is found in the degree of their resistance to the attack; that, therefore, their greater or less invariability gives them a higher or lower hierarchical po- sition; and that, in short, their invariability is all the greater when they constitute in being a more profound substratum, and belong not to its combination but to its elements. 210 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. n. Let us apply this principle to man ; at first to the moral man and to the arts which take him for object ; that is to say to dramatic music, to the romance, to the drama, to the epic and to liter- ature in general. What constitutes the order of the importance of charactess, and how verify their different degrees of variability? History sup- plies us with very sure and very simple means ; for events, in working upon man, modify in vari- ous proportions the various layers of ideas and of sentiments which we remark in him. Time scores us and furrows us as a pickaxe the soil, and thus exposes our moral geology ; under its action our superposed surfaces disappear in turn, some faster and others more slowly. The earliest strokes of the pick easily scratch off a loose soil, a sort of soft alluvion and wholly external ; later come harder packed gravel and thicker beds of sand which, in order to disappear, require more prolonged labor. Lower down stretch layers of 0JV THE IDEAL IN ART. 211 calcareous stone, marbles and shale all immova- ble and compact ; entire ages of continuous labor, profound excavations and repeated blastings are necessary in oi'der to effect results. Lower down still is buried at immeasurable distances, the primitive granite, the support of the rest, and, powerful as the attack of centuries may be, time fails entirely to remove it. On the surface of man are grafted manners, ideas, a kind of character which lasts three or four years, such as that of fashion and the pass- ing hour. A traveller who has been to America or to China finds that Paris is not the same Paris he left behind him. He feels like a pro- vincialist and an exile ; the pleasures of life wear a changed aspect; the vocabulary of the clubs and of the minor theatres is different ; the ex- quisite who rules in matters of fashion has no longer the same sort of elegance; he displays other vests and other cravats ; his scandals and his follies are manifested in another way; his name itself is even a novelty, he becomes in turn the pctit-maitre, the fop, the coxcomb, the dandy, 212 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. the lion, the gandin, the cocodes and k petit creve A few years suffice to sweep away and replace the name and the thing ; the variations of the toilette measure the variations of this sort of creature ; among all the varieties of man it is thf most superficial and empty. Below this we find a substratum of character a little more solid ; it lasts twenty, thirty, and forty years, about the half of a historic period. We have just seen the end of one, that which had its centre in i*he so- ciety of 1830. You will find its representative personage in the " Antony" of Alexander Dumas, in the young heroes of the drama of Victor Hugo, in the souvenirs and narratives of your uncles and of your fathers. It refers to the man of strong passions and sombre reveries, to the en- thusiast and the poet, to the politician and the revolutionist, to the humanitarian and the inno- vator, the would-be consumptive, the seeming fatalist, wearing the tragic vests and the pompous hair to be seen in the engravings of Deve"ria ; he now seems to us at once bombastic and artless, hut we cannot refuse to recognize him as being ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 213 ardent and magnanimous. In short he is the plebeian of a new class, richly endowed with faculties and with desires, who, having for the first time attained to the heights of society bois- terously displays the trouble of his mind and of his heart. His sentiments and his ideas are those of an entire generation ; hence it is that an entire generation has to elapse before we can see them disappear. This is the second substratum, and the time taken by history to dispose of it shows us the degree of its importance in showing us the degree of its depth. We have now reached the substratum of the third order, which is very vast and very deep, The characters composing it last a whole historic period, like the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Classic period. The same uniformity of mind prevailed then during one or many cen- turies and opposed itself to the secret assaults, to the violent destruction, to all the sapping and undermining which, during the whole period, constantly attacked it. Our grandfathers wit- nessed the disappearance of one Df these periods, 214 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. that of the Classic period which finished, as tc politics, with the revolution of 1789 ; and, as to literature, with Delille and M. de Fontanes, and, as to religion, with the appearance of Joseph de Maistre and the fall of Gallicanism. It had commenced in politics with Richelieu, in litera- ture with Malherbe, in religion with that peace- ful and spontaneous reform which, in the begin- ning of the seventeenth century, renewed French Catholicism. It has lasted nearly two centuries, and it may be recognized by unmistakable signs. To the costume of the cavalier and bully, which the exquisites of the Renaissance wore, succeeds the genuine dress-coat such as is neces- sary for drawing-rooms and the court ; the per- ruque, cuffs, the Rhinegrave, the easy-setting garment adapted to the varied and measured movements of the man of the world ; embroidered and gilded silks decked with laces, the pleasing and majestic attire made for seigneurs who desire to shine and yet preserve their rank. Through continued and accessory changes this costume lasts up to the moment when panta- ON THE IDEAL IN ART 215 loons, the republican boot and the grave, useful black coat came to replace shoe-buckles, tight silk-hose, lace frills, figured waistcoats and the rose-colored, or light-blue, or apple-green coat of the old court. Throughout this interval one character prevails which Europe still gives us credit for, that of the polished gallant French- ' man, expert in the art of treating others courte- ously, brillant in conversation, fashioned, more or less remotely, according to the courtier of Ver- sailles, loyal to the noble style and to all the mon- archical proprieties of language and of manners. A group of doctrines and of sentiments are joined to these, or are derived from them ; religion, the state, philosophy, love, the family then receive the imprint of the prevailing character ; and this sum of moral aptitudes constitutes one of the grand types which the human memory will always cherish, because it recognizes in it one of the leading forms of human development. However firm and stable these typos may be they come to an end. We see, for eighty years past, the Frenchman, engrossed bv the demo 216 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. cratic regime, lose much of bis politeness, the greater part of his gallantry, intensifying, diver- sifying and varying his tone of character, and comprehending in a novel way all the great in- terests of society and of the human mind. A people, in the course of its long life, goes through many such reiterations ; and yet it re- mains intact, not only by the continuity of the generations composing it, but also by the per- sistence of the character underlying it. Herein consists the primitive substratum; beneath the strong foundation which the historic periods bear away, deepens and extends itself a foundation much stronger, which the historic periods do not bear away. If you consider in turn the leading races from their first appearance up to the pres- ent time you will always find in them a class of instincts and of aptitudes over which revolu- tions, decadences, civilization have passed with- out having affected them. These aptitudes and these instincts are in the blood and are trans- mitted with it ; in order to change them a change of blood is necessary, that is to say an invasion, ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 217 a permanent conquest, and consequently, com- minglings of raca, or, at least, a change of the physical milieu, that is to say an emigration and the slow effect of a new climate, in short a trans- formation of temperament and of the physical structure. When, in the same country the blood remains nearly unmixed the same character of spirit and of mind which shows itself in the former grandfathers is again found in the latest grandchildren. The Achaian of Homer, the lo- quacious and babbling hero who on the battle- field relates genealogies and histories to his ad- versary before giving him blows with his lance, is substantially the same as the Athenian of Euripides, philosopher, sophist, and wrangler who utters in the open theatre the maxims of the schools and the pleadings of the agora ; we see him later in the dilletant, complacent, parasitic Groeeulits of the Roman sovereignty ; in the bibli- ophilist critic of Alexandria ; in the disputatious theologian of the Lower Empire ; the John Cantacuzenes and the wranglers who, become infatuated over the uncreated light of Mount 218 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. Athos, are the true sons of Nestor and ol Ulysses ; through twenty-five centuries of civili- zation and of decadence prevails the same powei of language, of analysis, of dialectics and of subtilty. In like manner the Anglo-Saxon such as we behold him through the manners, the civil laws and the ancient poesy of the barbaric epoch, a sort of ferocious, carnivorous and militant brute, but heroic and endowed with noble moral and poetic instincts, reappears, after five hundred years of Norman conquest and of French impor- tations, in the impassioned and imaginative drama of the Renaissance, in the brutality and licentiousness of the Eestoration, in the sombre and austere puritanism of the Revolution, in the foundation of political liberty and the triumph of moral culture, in the energy, tbe pride, the sadness, the elevation of character and the max- ims which, in England, sustain, at the present day, the laborer and the citizen. Let us look at the Spaniard described by Strabo and the latin historians, solitary, haughty, indomitable, dressed in black ; and let us behold him later, in the ON THE IDEAL IN ART. i>19 middle ages, the same in his leading traits al- though the Visigoths cast a little new blood into his veins, as obstinate, as untractable and as ar- rogant, driven to the sea by the Moors and re- gaining step by step all his patrimony by a crusade of eight centuries, still exalted and hard- ened by the length and the monotony of the strug- gle, fanatical and narrow, limited to the ways of the inquisitor and the knight just as in the times of the Cid, under Philip 3X, under Charles H., in the war of 1700, and in the war of 1808, and in the chaos of despotisms and of insurrections which he maintains at the present day. Let us consider in fine, the Gauls, our ancestors : the Romans said of them that they prided themselves on two things, namely, to fight bravely and to talk adroitly.* These, indeed, are the great nat- ural gifts which show themselves the most in our tabors and in our history : on the one hand, the military spirit, brilliant and sometimes fool- ish courage ; on the other, literary talent, the * Duns res iiidustriosissimS IK rscqui'ur gens Gallorum, rein milftarem et argute loqui. 220 ON THE IDEAL 1ft AM charm of conversation and delicacy of style. Immediately on the formation of our language in the twelfth century the Frenchman, gay, art- ful, fond of amusing himself and others, who talks easily and too much, who knows how to address women, who loves to shine, who exposes himself boastingly and also through impulse, sensitive to the idea of honor, less sensitive to the idea of duty, appears in literature and in so- ciety. The songs of the troubadours and the fables, the Romance of the Rose, Charles of Orleans, Joinville and Froissart, represent him to you such as you are to see him later in Villon, Brantome and Rabelais ; such as he will be again in the time of his greatest glory, in the time of La Fontaine, Moliere, and Voltaire, in the charming drawing-rooms of the eighteenth cen- tury and even down to the century of Berenger. Thus is it with every people ; it suffices to com- pare one epoch of its history with the contem- porary epoch of another history in order to find again under secondary changes the national character always intact and persistent. ON TJIK IDEAL IN ART. 221 This is the primitive foundation ; it lasts the whole life of a people, and serves as a support to the successive strata which successive periods happen to deposit on the surface. If you were to go further down you would find other founda- tions still deeper; there are the obscure and gigantic strata which linguistic science is begin- ning to lay bare. Underlying the characters of communities are the characters of races. Cer- tain general traits denote old relationships be- tween nations of a different genius ; the Latins, the Greeks, the Germans, the Sclavonians, the Celts, the Persians, the Hindoos are offshoots of the same ancient trunk; neither migrations, crossings, nor transformations of temperament have been able to graft on them certain philo- sophisal and social aptitudes, certain general ways of conceiving morality, of comprehending nature, of expressing thought. On the other hand these fundamental traits which are com- mon to all of them are not to be found in a different race such as the Semites or the Chi- nese ; these possess others and of the same 222 ON THE WEAL IN ART. order. The different races are to each other in moral as a vertebrata, an articulata, a mollusk are to each other in physical relationship ; they are beings organized according to distinct plans and belonging to distinct divisions. Finally, at the lowest stage, are found the characters pecu- liar to every superior race capable of spon- taneous civilization, that is to say endowed with that aptitude for general ideas which is the appanage of man and which leads him to found societies, religions, philosophies and arts; sim- ilar dispositions subsist through all the differ- ences of race, and the physiological diversities which master the rest do not succeed in affecting them. Such is the order in which are superposed the layers of sentiments, of ideas, of aptitudes and of instincts composing the human soul. You see how in descending from the higher to the lower we find them always more complex, and how their importance is measured by their stability. The rule that we have borrowed from the natu- ral sciences here finds its full application and ON THE WEAL ZA ART. 223 verifies itself in all its consequences. For the characters the most stable are in civil as in natural history the most elementary, the most profound and the most general. In the psychological, a well as in the organic individual, it is neces- sary to distinguish the primitive as well as the later characters, the elements which are pri- mordial and their arrangement which is derived. Now a character is elementary when it is com- mon to all the movements of the intellect : such is the aptitude to think by means of vivid imagery, or by long chains of ideas exactly con- catenated ; it is not peculiar to certain particu- lar movements of the intellect ; it establishes its empire over all the provinces of human thought, and exercises its action over all the productions of the human mind; as soon as man reasons, imagines, and speaks it is present and para- mount ; it impels him on in a certain direction, it closes to him certain issues. Thus is it with others. Thus the more elementary a character is the more extended is its ascendency. But the more its ascendency is extended the more stable 224 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. it is. There are situations already very genera] and, consequently, dispositions not less general, which determine historic periods and their lead- ing representatives tke wayward and insatiate plebeian of our century, the aristocratic courtier and drawing-room favorite of the classic era, the lonely and independent baron of the middle ages. There are characters much more profound and wholly belonging to the physical temperament which constitute national genius: in Spain the need of sharp and keen sensations and the terri- ble explosion of an exalted and concentrated imagination ; in France the need of clear and affiliated ideas and the easy movement of the fa- cile reason. They are the most elementary dis- positions ; a language with or without a gram- mar, a phrase capable or incapable of a period, a thought at one time reduced to a dry algebraic notation, at another, flexible, poetic, and subtle, at another, impassioned, keen, and violently ex- plosive which constitute the races like those of the Chinese, the Aryans and the Semites, Here, as in natural history, it is necessary to ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 225 note the embryo of the nascent mind in order to discover in it the distinctive traits of the com- plete and developed mind ; the characters of the primitive age are the most significant of all ; as according to the presence, the absence, or the number of the cotyledons we divine the order to which the plant and the principal traits of its type belong, so, according to the structure of language and the nature of myths we can form an idea of the future form of religion, of philoso- phy, of society and of art. You perceive that in the human kingdom as in the animal or vegetable kingdom the principle of the subordination of characters establishes the same hierarchy: the superior rank and the first importance belong to the most stable characters ; and if these are more stable it is that, being more elementary, they are present on a much larger surface and are swept away only by a greater revolution. 226 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. m. To this scale of moral values corresponds, step by step, the scale of literary values. All things in other respects being equal, according as the character set forth in a book is more or less im- portant, that is to say more or less elementary and stable, this book becomes more or less beau- tiful, and you will see the layers of the moral strata communicate to the literary works which express them, their proper degree of power and duration. There is, at first, a literature of fashion which expresses the character in the fashion ; it lasts, like that character, three or four years and some- times less; it commonly blossoms and decays with the leaves of the year: it consists of the romance, the farce, the pamphlet, the novelty in vogue. Head, if you have the courage to do so, a vaudeville or a humorous piece of the year 1835, you will let it drop out of your hand. Attempts are often made to reproduce it on the ON THE IDEAL IN ART, 227 stage ; twenty years ago it was the rage ; to-day the audience yawn and the piece quickly disap- pears from the play-bills. This or that romance, once sung at every piano, is now ludicrous ; we find it insipid and discordant ; it is at best only encountered in some remote and antiquated province ; itexpresses onlvjBome of those eyaii- escent sentiments which a slight variation in customs suffices to do away with ; it has become old-fashioned, and we are surprised at ourselves for having been pleased with such foolish things. Thus, from among the innumerable writings which see the light, time makes its selection ; superficial and slightly persistent characters are borne away with the works which express them. Other works correspond to characters some- what more durable, and seem to be masterpieces to the generations which read them. Such was that famous "AstreV* which D'TJrfe composed at the commencement of the seventeenth cen- tury a pastoral romance, of infinite length and yet greater dulness, a bower of foliage and flowers to which men, weary with thi slaughter ON THE IDEAL IN ART. and brigandage of religious wars, betook them- selves to listen to the sighs and sentimentalities of Celadon. Such were the romances of Mad- emoiselle de Scudery the " Grand Cyrus," and " Clelie," in which the exaggerated, refined and measured gallantry introduced into France by the Spanish queens, the noble dissertation on the new language, the mysteries of the heart and the ceremonial of politeness, were displayed like the majestic robes and formal reverences of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Countless works had this kind of merit which to-day are nothing more than historical documents: foi example, the "Euphues" of Lilly, the "Adonis" of Ma- rini, the " Hudibras " of Butler, and the biblical pastorals of Gessner. We are not without such writings now-a-days, but I prefer not to mention them ; I will only remark that about 1806 " M. Esmenard held at Paris the position of a great man,"* and enumerate the multitude of worka which seemed sublime at the beginning of the * An exj ression of Stendhal'B. ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 228 literary revolution of which we now see the end " Atala," " The Last of the Abencerrages," the "Natchez" and many of Madame de Stael's and Lord Byron's personages. At present the first stage of the journey has been passed over, and, stationed where we are, we detect without any difficulty the exaggeration and the affecta- tion which contemporaries did not suspect. The celebrated elegy of Millevoye on the " Chute des Feuilles" leaves us as unmoved as the "Messe- niennes" of Casimir Delavigne ; it is because the two works, half classic and half romantic, corre- sponded by their mixed character to a generation placed on the frontier of two periods, and their success has had precisely the duration of the moral character which they manifested. Many very remarkable cases show most clearly how the value of a work increases and decreases with the value of the character expressed. It seems that here nature yoked together expe- rience and counter-experience with premeditated purpose. We might cite writers who have left one work of the first among twenty of the secondary 230 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. order. In both cases the talent, the education, the preparation, the effort was all alike ; never- theless, in the first, there issued from the cruci- ble, an ordinary work ; in the second, a master- piece saw the light. This is due to the fact that in the first case the writer expressed only super- ficial and transitory characters, whilst in the second he seized upon enduring and profound characters. Le Sage wrote twelve volumes of romances imitated from the Spanish, and the Abbe Prevost twenty volumes of tragic and pa- thetic novels ; the curious alone seek these out, while everybody has read Gil Bias and Manon Lescaut. The reason of this is that a happy accident twice brought to the artist's hand a stable type of which every man encounters traits in the society around him or in the sentiments of his own breast. Gil Bias is a bourgeois with a classic education, having passed through all conditions of society and made a fortune, easy in his conscience, somewhat a valet his whole life, a little picaro in his youth, accommodating himself to the standard of worldly morality, by ON TEE IDEAL Uf ART. 231 no means a stoic and still less a patriot, securing hi# own share of the cake and freely biting into that of the public, but gay, sympathetic, no hyp- ocrite, capable occasionally of self-judgment having fits of honesty with a substratum of honor and benevolence, and winding up with a well-regulated and straight-forward life. A like character, adopting the medium in all things, and a like destiny, so tangled and diversified, is daily encountered and will be again to-morrow as it was in the eighteenth century. In a simi- lar manner, in Manon Lescaut, the courtezan who is an amiable girl, immoral through the craving for luxury, but affectionate by instinct, and capable in the end of returning a love equal to the absolute love which made all sacrifices for her, is a type of so permanent a nature that George Sand in Leone Leoni and Victor Hugo in Marion Ddorme have taken it up to put it again upon the stage, simply reversing the parts and changing the time. De Foe wrote two hundred volumes, and Cervantes I know not iow many dramas and romances, the former with the truth- 232 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. ful detail, the minutiae, the dry precision of a pu- ritan business-man, and the latter with the in- vention, the glow, the insufficiency, the gener- osity of a Spanish cavalier and adventurer : of the one there remains Robinson Crusoe, and of the other Don Quixote. It is because Robinson Crusoe is, at first, the genuine Englishman com- pletely embodying the profound instincts of the race still visible in the sailor and in the colonial squatter of his country, violent and savage in his resolutions, protestant and biblical at heart, with those silent fermentations of the imagina- tion and of the conscience which lead to crises of conversion and of grace, energetic, obstinate, patient, indefatigable, born for labor, capable of clearing away and colonizing continents ; it is because the same personage, apart from national character, presents to the eye the severest ex- perience of human life and an abridgment of all human invention, showing the individual torn from civilized society and constrained to recover by his solitary effort so many arts and so many industries, of which the benefits surround him ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 23S hourly and unconsciously as water surrounds the fish. In like manner, in Don Quixote we see at first the chivalrous and morbid Spaniard, such as eight centuries of crusades and of overcharged reveries had made him, but, besides this, one of the eternal prototypes of human history, the heroic, sublime, visionary, meager and broken- down idealist : in order to strengthen the impres- sion, and by way of contrast, we see alongside of him the sage, matter-of-fact, vulgar and gross bumpkin. May I still cite to you another of those immortal personages in which a race and an epoch are recognized, and whose name becomes one of the current terms of a language, the Figaro of Beaumarchais, a kind of Gil Bias more ner- vous and more revolutionary than the other? And yet the author was simply a man of talent ; he was too sparkling with wit to create, like Moliere, spirits that live ; but, one day, drawing a picture of himself, with his gayety, his expe- dients, his irreverence, his repartees, his courage, his natural good-heartedness, his inexhaustible vivacity, he has delineated, witrout so intending 234 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. it, the portrait of the true Frenchman, and hia talent rose to genius. There occur counter ver- ifications, and there are cases where genius de- scends to talent. Many a writer who knows how to mould and put in motion the greatest person- ages leaves in his group of figures a crowd of inan- imate beings, who, at the end of a century, seem dead or repulsive, open to ridicule, whose whole interest belongs to antiquaries and historians. For example the lovers of Racine are all mar- quises ; all their character is in their good be- havior ; their sentiments are so fashioned as to please dandies ; he makes them gallants ; in his hands they become court-puppets; even now intelligent foreigners cannot endure M. Hippo- lyte and M. Xiphares. In the same way the clowns of Shakespeare amuse no more, and his young gentlemen appear extravagant ; one must bo a critic and an expert in order to place him- self at the proper point of view ; their play on words is offensive, and their metaphors are un- intelligible ; their pretentious jargon is a con- ventionalism of the sixteenth century, as the ON THE WEAL IN ART. 235 refined tirade is one of the proprieties of the seventeenth century. There are also fashionable personages ; the exterior and the effect of the hour are so predominant in them that the rest disappear. You perceive, by this twofold ex- perience, the importance of profound and endur- ing characters, since a lack of them degrades a great man's work to the second rank, and their presence exalts the work of a lesser talent to the first rank. It is for this reason that if one froes through the great litearv_jvorkSj, he will find that all manifest a profound and durable character, and that their rank is higher according as this CJ CJ character is more durable and more profound. They are generalizations which present to the mind under a sensible form at one time the prin- cipal traits of a historical period, at another the primordial instincts and faculties of a race, at an- other some fragment of the universal man and those elementary psychological forces which are the ultimate explanation of human events. IE order to be convinced of this we need net pass 236 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. in review the various literary works. It will be sufficient to note the use which is now made of literary works in history. It is through these that the deficiencies of memoirs, constitu- tions, and diplomatic documents are supplied; they show us with an astonishing precision and clearness, the sentiments of diverse epochs, the instincts and aptitudes of diverse races, all the great secret springs whose equilibrium maintains societies and whose discords lead to revolutions. The positive history and chronology of ancient India are almost useless; but its heroic and sacred poems remain to us, and in these we see its spirit laid bare, that is to say the order and condition of its imagination, the extent and con- nection of its dreams, the depth and disorder of its philosophical divinations and the inner prin- ciple of its religion and of its institutions. Let us consider Spain at the end of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century. If you read Lazarillo de Tomes and the picaresque. romances, if you study the drama of Lope de __i_j mm ^""- ^-^^._^^i>\^^-^--*\.Brt.wu^* tfc -.-'>T fc . hl ,..v.^.. .-^ v ; t|1| ,^; V1|||| j( ^ ^ Vega, of Caldoron and other dramatists, you will ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 237 Bee rising before you two living figures, the beg- gar and the cavalier, who will showjp_ij...alL-tlie.. misery, all the grandeur and all the follj of this strange civilization. The more perfect a work is the deeper are the characteristics portrayed in it. We'imgEt extract from Racine the whole system of the monarchical sentiments of our seven- teenth century, the portrait of the king, of the queen, of the children of France, of noble court- iers, ladies of honor, and prelates ; all the domi- nant ideas of the time, feudal fidelity, chivalric honor, servility of the ante-chamber, the decorum of the palace, the devotion of servants and subjects, the perfection of manners, the sway and tyranny of propriety, the natural and artificial niceties of language, of the heart, of Christian* ity and of morality ; in short, the habits and sentiments which make up the principal traits of the ancient regime. Our greatest modern epics, the Divine Comedy and Faust, are sum- maries of two grand European historical epochs. One shows us fee way in which the Middle Ages regarded life, aud the other the way ic 238 ON TILE .WEAL IN ART. which we regard it. Both of them express tli highest truth to which two sovereign minds, each in its time, attained, Dante's poem depicts the man who, transported outside of this ephemeral world, traverses the supernatural, the sole defini- tive and subsisting world ; he was conducted by two powers, the exalted love which then con- trolled human life, and systematic theology which was then the queen of speculative thought ; his poetic dream, by turns horrible and sublime, is the mystic reverie which then seemed the perfect state of the human mind. Goethe's poem depicts the man who, led through all the ways of science and of life, gets bruised and dis- gusted, wanders and gropes around, and finally settles down resignedly into practical life with- out, among so many painful experiences and unsatisfied questionings, ever ceasing to realize behind its legendary veil that superior realm of ideal forms and of incorporeal forces on the threshold of which thought is arrested, and to which alone the divinations of the hen it can penetrate. Among so many finished works ON THE WEAL IN ART. 239 which manifest the essential charactei of a race or an epoch, there are some which, by a singular chance, express, moreover, some sentiment^spme type, common to almost all groups of humanity ; such are the Hebrew Psalms that confront the monotheistic man with the Almighty Judge and Sovereign God; the " Imitation." which shows the communion of the tender soul with the loving and consoling Redeemer; the poems of Homer and the dialogues of Plato, which repre- sent the heroic youth of the active man, or the charming adolescence of the reflective man ; nearly all Hint Greuk literature which possessed the privilege of representing healthy and simple sentiments ; Shakespeare, in fine, the greatest in original creations, the deepest observer of man, the most clear-sighted of all those who have comprehended the mechanism of the human passions, the mute fermentations and the violent explosions of the imaginative brain, the unfore- seen derangements of consciousness, the tyranny of the flesh and blood, the fatalities of character and the obscure causes of our sanity and in- 240 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. sanity. Don Quixote, Candide, and Robinson Crusoe, are books of a like scope. Works of this class survive the century and the people to whom they owe their origin. They pass beyond *" < - J .. . M.*~jJkff*-*-neiu t .+r*~.jKW* *** the ordinary limits of time and space : they are -t-i ^^Tv^.----^-^--^^'^^^^''^ a ''' n "'"'''^t^^----~'^~^^ l "' < a ' understood wherever we find a thinking mind ; their popularity is indestructible and their dura- tion infinite. A final proof of the connection between moral and literary values, and of the principle which arranges the works of art above or below each other, according to the impor- tance, the stability and the depth of the historic or psychological character which they have expressed. 0A '1'HJti IDMAL IN A&T. 241 IV It is now for us to construct a similar scale for the physical man and for the arts representing him, namely sculpture, and especially painting ; pursuing the same method, we shall, at first, seek what are, in the physical man, the most stable characters, since they are the most impor- tant ones. It is clear, in the first place, that a fashion- able coat is of very secondary importance; it changes every two years, or at least, every ten years. So is it with dress in general ; it is an externality and a decoration; it may be taken off with a turn of the hand ; the essential thing in the living form is the living body itself ; the rest is accessory and artificial. Other charac- ters which, in this instance, belong to the body itself, are likewise of secondary importance; they are the peculiarities of a profession and of a tiada A blacksmith has other arms than a 242 ON THE IDEAL IN AST. lawyer; an officer walks differently from a priest ; a countryman who labors all day in the sun has other muscles, another color to his skin, another curve of the spine, other wrinkles on the brow, another air, than the city denizen shut up in a drawing-room or in his counting-room. These characters have unquestionably a certain solidity; man preserves them all his life; once contracted, the wrinkle remains; a very slight accident was sufficient to produce these, and another accident not less slight might have sufficed to remove them. Their sole cause con- sists of an accident of birth or of education; change the condition, and the milieu of the man, and you will find in him opposite peculiarities ; the citizen reared like the countryman will have the air of the countryman, and the countryman reared like the citizen will have the air of a citizen. The original character will remain, when thirty years' education will be apparent, if apparent at all, only to the psychologist and moralist ; the body will preserve only impercept- ible traits of it, and the innate and stable ON TEE IDEAL IN AST. 243 characters, which are its essence, compose a layer much deeper and wholly unaffected by these passing causes. Other influences equally affecting the soul leave but a feeble impression on the body ; I allude to historical epochs. The system of ideas and of sentiments which engrossed the human brain under Louis XIV. was quite different from that of the present day, but the physical framework differed but slightly ; the most we can discover, in consulting the portraits, statues, and engravings of that day, is a more imposing habit of noble and dignified attitudes. That which varies the most is the expression; a Renaissance countenance, such as we see it in the portraits by Bronzino and Van Dyke, is stronger and more simple than a modern face ; for the last three centuries the swarm of subtle and fleeting ideas with which we are penetrated, the complexity of our tastes, the feverish uneasiness of our thoughts, the excesses of our cerebral life, the burden of con- tinuous labor, have refined, troubled, and tor- mented both the face and the expression 244 ON THE IDEAL IN AST. Lastly, if we take long periods we shall be able to detect a certain alteration of the head itself ; those physiologists who have measured the skulls of the twelfth century, find them to be of less capacity than our own. But history, which preserves so exact a register of moral variations, only states in mass, and very imperfectly, physi- cal variations. The reason is, that the same alteration of the human animal, morally enor- mous, is very slight physically ; an imperceptible modification of the brain makes a lunatic, a fool, or a man of genius ; a social revolution which, at the end of two or three centuries, renews all the springs of the mind and of the will, only slightly affects the organs; and history, which furnishes the means of subordinating to each other the characters of the soul, does not furnish the means for subordinating to each other the characters of the physical being. We are, consequently, obliged to take another course, and here again it is the principle of the subordination of characters which leads us. You have noticed that when a character is more OX TILE IDEAL IN ART. 246 stable, it is because it is more elementary ; the cause of its duration is its depth. Let us seek therefore, in the living form for the characters peculiar to its elements, and for this purpose let me call your attention to a model, such as you have before your eyes in your drawing-schools. Here is a naked man ; what is there that is com- mon to all portions of this animated surface? What is the element which, repeated and diver- sified, occurs again and again in each fragment of the whole ? From the point of view of.forPL it is a bone provided with, tendons and clothed with muscles^ here the omoplate and the clavi- cle, there the femur and the thigh-bone ; higher up the vertebral column and the skull, each with its articulations, its depressions, its projections, its aptitude for serving as fulcrum or lever, and those coils of retractile muscles which, in turn, shrink and expand hi order to communicate to it its different positions and its diverse movements. An articulated skeleton and a covering of nius- cles, all logically enchained, a superb and intelli- gent machine for action and for effort, such i 246 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. the basis of the visible v ,nian. If now you take into account, in considering him, modifications which race, climate, and temperament superadd, softness or rigidity of muscles, diverse propor- tions of parts, elongation or contraction of body and limbs, you will have in hand the whole inte- rior framework of the body, such as sculpture and drawing take it to be. Over the naked mus- cles is extended a second covering, common also to all the parts, the skin with vibrating papilla undulatingly blue through its network of small veins, yellow through the transparent casing of the tendons, red through the flow of blood, pearly in contact with the membranous tissues, now smooth and now striated, of a richness and an incomparable variety of tones, luminous in shadow, all palpitating in the light, betraying by its nervous sensibility the delicacy of the soft pulp and the renewal of the fluent flesh, of which it is the transparent veil. If, besides this, you remark the diversities which raoe^ climate, and temperament contribute to it ; if you note how in the lymphatic, bilious, or sanguine subject it is ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 247 found now tender, flabby, rosy white and wan, now firm, consistent, amber-tinted, and ferrny ginous, you will grasp the second element of visible life, that which belongs to the domain of IM.I*II iiiiiii'"">*'y*t ,..*>. t -. -*f**J***nM*^"* HJ ^XMIKIlglH ' ** the painter, and which the colorist alone can express. These constitute the deep-seated and inner characters of the physical man, and I have no need jo point out that they are ptable Jfflffl they are insegarable^from , th 248 ON THE WEAL 12? ART. V. To this scale of physical values corresponds, step by step, a scale of plastic values. More- over, other things being equal, according as the character brought into light by a picture or a statue is more or less important, this picture and this statue are more or less beautiful. Thia is why you find in the lowest rank, those draw- ings, aquarelles, pastels, and statuettes, which in man do not depict the man, but his dress, and especially the dress of the day. Illustrated reviews are full of them ; they might almost be called fashion-plates ; every exaggeration of costume is therein displayed : wasp-like waists, monstrous skirts, overloaded and fantastic head- dresses ; the artist is heedless of the deformity of the human body; that which gives him pleasure is the fashion of the moment, the gloss of stuffs, the close fitting of a glove, the perfec- tion of the chignon. Alongside of the scribbler with the pen he is the scribbler with the pencil ; ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 249 he may have a good deal of talent and wit, but he appeals only to a transient taste ; in twenty years his coats will be completely out of date. Countless sketches of this description which, in 1830, were in vogue, are, at the present hour, simply historic or grotesque. Numbers of por- traits in our annual exhibitions are nothing but portraits of costumes, and, alongside of the painters of man, are the painters of moire- antique and of satin. Other painters, although superior to these, still remain on the lower steps of art ; or rather they have some talent besides their art; they are badly-placed observers, born to compose romances and studies on society, and who, instead of the pen, have taken up the brush. That which strikes them is the peculiarities of a calling, of a profession, of training, the impress of vice or of virtue, of passion or of habit; Hogarth, Wilkie, Mulready, and hosts of Eng- lish painters possessed this gift so slightly pic- turesque and so literary. They see in the physi- cal man only the moral man ; with them color, 250 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. drawing, truthfulness, and the beauty of th living body, are subordinate. It suffices foi them to represent by forms, attitudes and colors, at one time the frivolity of a fashionable woman, at another the honest sorrow of an old steward, at another the debasement of a gambler, and innumerable petty dramas or comedies of real life, all instructive or diverting, and almost all with a view to inspire good sentiments or to correct abuses. Properly speaking, they delin- eate nothing but spirits, minds, and emotions. They incline so strongly to this side as to out- rage form and render it inflexible; frequently their pictures are caricatures, and always illus- trations, the illustrations to a village idyl, or to a domestic romance which Burns, Fielding, or Dickens might better have written. The same prepossessions attend them when treating histo- rical subjects ; they treat them not as painters, but as historians, in order to display the moral sentiments of a personage or of an epoch, the expression of a Lady Bussell contemplating hei condemned husband piously receiving the sacra- ON THIS IDEAL IN ART. 251 ment, the despair of Edith with the swan's neck on discovering Harold among the dead at Hast- ings. Composed of archeological researches and of psychological documents, their work appeals only to archeologists and to psychologists, or at least, to the curious and to philosophers. At most, it answers the purpose of a satire or of a drama; the spectator is made to laugh or to weep, as at the fifth act of a play on the stage. It is evident, nevertheless, that this order of art is eccentric ; it is an encroachment of painting on literature, or rather an invasion of literature on the domain of painting. Our artists of the school of 1830, Delaroche among the first, fell, although less gravely, into the same mistake. The beauty of a plastic work is, above all, plastic, and an art always degenerates when, discarding its own peculiar means for exciting interest, it borrows those of another art. I now come to the great example iu which are combined all others, namely, the history of painting in general, and foremost, of that Italian painting, on which I have been commenting foi 252 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. the past three years. A series of proofs and counter-proofs here shows during five hundred years the picturesque value of the character which the theory prescribes as the essence of the physical man. At one particular time the hu- man animal, the bony framework covered with muscles, the sensitive and colored flesh and skin, were comprehended and animated for them- selves alone, and above everything else ; this is the grand epoch ; the works it has left to us pass for the most beautiful in the judgment of all; all schools resort to them in quest of models and to be instructed. At other epochs the idea of the figure is, at one time, incomplete, and at another mingled with other preoccupations and subordinated to other preferences ; these are the periods of infancy, of transformation, or of decadence ; however richly endowed artists may be, they execute at such times only inferior or secondary works ; their talent is not wisely applied; they have not caught, or they have imperfectly caught, the fundamental character of the visible man. Thus is the value of the ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 253 work, in all directions, proportionate to the domination of this character ; it is important for the writer, above all things, to produce living characters ; and it is equally important for the sculptor and the painter to create living bodies. It is according to this principle that you have seen classed the successive periods of art. From Cimabue to Masaccio the painter ignores perspective, modelling and anatomy ; he contem- plates the palpable and solid body only through a veil ; consistency, vitality, the moving frame- work, the acting muscles of the trunk and of the limbs do not interest him ; personages, with him, consist of outlines and of shadows of men, and, sometimes, of glorified and incorporeal spirits. The religious sentiment prevails over the plastic instinct ; it portrays to the eye theological sym- bols with Taddeo Gaddi, moralities with Orca- gna, and seraphic visions with Fra Angelico. The painter, arrested by the spirit of the middle ages, remains and gropes a long time at the ioor of great art. When he enters, it is through the discovery of perspective, through the search for 254 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. relief, through the study of anatomy, through the use of oil, in the persons of Paolo Uccello, Masaccio, Fra Filippo Lippi, Antonio Pollaiolo, Verocchio, Ghirlandajo, Antonello de Messine, almost all of them pupils in a goldsmith's shop, friends and successors of Donatello, Ghiberti, and other great sculptors of the age, all passion- ately devoted to the study of the human figure, all pagan admirers of muscles and animal energy, so penetrated by the sentiment of physi- cal life that their works, although stiff, defaced, and infected with literal imitation, secure for them a unique position, and still maintain to-day their full value. The masters who have sur- passed them have done no more than develop their principle ; the glorious school of the Floren- tine renaissance recognizes them for its found- ers ; Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo, Michael Angelo, are their pupils; Raphael resorted to them to study, and one-half of his genius belongs to them. There is the centre of Italian art, and of high art. The master idea of all these artists is that of the living, healthy, eneiv ON THE IDEAL IN AST. 255 getic, active body, endowed with every athletic and animal aptitude. " The important thing in the art of drawing," says Cellini, " is to make a good drawing of a naked man and woman." He speaks with enthusiasm of the admirable bones of the head ; " of the omoplates which, when the arm makes an effort, describe lines of magnifi- cent effect ; of the five false ribs which, when the torso bends forward or backward, form such wonderful depressions and projections around the navel." .... "Thou must then draw the bone situated between the two thighs, it is very beautiful, and is called the crupper, or sacrum." One of the pupils of Yerocchio, Nanni Grosso, on dying in the hospital, rejected an ordinary crucifix presented to him, demanding to have one by Donatello brought, declaring that " otherwise he would die unshrived, so disagree- able to him were the badly executed works of his art." Luca Signorelli, having lost a beloved son, caused his corpse to be stripped and made a minute drawing of all its muscles ; these were to him the essential of the man, and he stamped 256 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. on his memory those of his own child. At this moment, one step only remains to be taken in order to complete the physical man : more stress must be laid on the coating of the muscles, on the softness and tone of the living skin, on the delicate and varied vitality of the sensitive flesh : Correggio and the Venetians take this step and art stands still. Thenceforth, art is in full bloom, the sentiment of the human body has attained to its completest expression. It de- clines gradually ; we see it decreasing, losing a portion of its sincerity and its gravity under Julio Romano, Rosso, and Primaticcio, and then degenerate into school conventionalism, aca- demic traditions and studio prescriptions. From this moment art becomes transformed, notwith- standing the well-meaning studious disposition of the Caracci ; it becomes less plastic and more literary. The three Caracci, their pupils or their successors, Domenichino, Guido, Guercino and Baroccio, aim at dramatic effects, bleeding mar- tyrs, pathetic scenes and sentimental expres- sions. The insipidities of sigisbeism and of ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 057 devotion mingle with reminiscences of the heroic style. You find graceful heads and beatific smiles over athletic bodies and strained muscles. The airs and the affectations of society peer out in dreamy Madonnas, in pretty Herodiases and in fascinating Magdalens commissioned by the taste of the day. Painting, which is declining, strives to render delicacies which the growing opera is about to express. Albano is a boudoir painter ; Dolci, Cigoli and Sassoferrato are deli- cate, and almost modern, spirits. "With Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano the grand scenes of pagan or Christian legend become transformed into agreeable masquerades for the drawing-room ; the artist is nothing but a bril- liant, amusing, fashionable improvisator, the art of painting coming to an end at the same time that the art of music begins, that is to say, when the human brain ceases to contemplate the ener- gies of the body, in order to turn to the emotions of the heart. If now you turn to the great foreign schools, you will find that their perfection and their 258 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. excellence were based upon the predominance of the same character, and that the same sentiment of physical life engendered the masterpieces of art in the north and throughout Italy. That which distinguishes the schools among each other is the representation by each of a tempera- ment, the temperament of its climate and of its country. The genius of the masters consists in fashioning a race of bodies ; thus regarded, they are physiologists, as writers are .psychologists i they expose every variety and all the conse- quences of the bilious, the lymphatic^ the ner- vous or the sanguine temperament, as the great novelists and the great dramatists expose every reaction and every diversity of the imaginative, reflective, civilizejd^ jx^ jongultured. ...soul,. You are familiar in the works of the Florentine artists with the erect, slender, muscular type, noble in instinct and with gymnastic aptitudes, such as may be evolved from a sober, graceful, active race, subtle in intellect and on a dry soil. I have shown you in the Venetian artists the rounded, undulatory, and regularly developed ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 259 forms, the flesh ample and white, the hair ruddy or blond, the type sensual, sprightly and con- tented, such as may be evolved in a moist and luminous region among Italians whose climate resembles that of the Flemings, and who are poets in the matter of voluptuousness. You may see in Rubens the white or the pale, the rosy or the ruddy German, lymphatic, sanguine, carnivorous, and a great consumer, a man of a northern and watery soil, liberally fashioned, but not clumsy; of irregular and plethoric shape, redundant in flesh, of brutal and unbridled instincts, whose flabby pulp suddenly reddens with the flux of emotion, becomes easily modi- fied by the severities of the atmosphere and horribly disorganized in the hands of death. The Spanish painters will place before your eyes the type of their race, the wiry and nervous animal with firm muscles hardened by the blasts of their sierras and their scorching sun, tena- cious and indomitable, boiling with suppressed passion, all aglow with inward fire, dark, austere and spare ; among confused tones of sombre 200 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. stuffs and of dark clouds which suddenly open in order to disclose an exquisite rose, the bright carnation of youth, beauty, love and enthusiasm diffusing itself over the blooming cheeks. The greater the artist the more profoundly does he manifest the temperament of his race: without any suspicion of it he, like the poet, furnishes to history the most fruitful documents ; he extracts and amplifies the essential of the physical being as the other extracts and amplifies the essential of the moral being, while the historian discerns in pictures the structure and corporeal instincts of a people as he discerns in literature the struc- ture and spiritual aptitudes of a civilization. The concordance, then, is complete, and characters bear with them into a wo^k of art the value which they already possess in nature. According as they possess in themselves a greater or less value, they communicate a greater ON THE IDEAL IN ART 261 or less value to the work. When they traverse the intellect of the writer or of the artist, in order to pass from the real world into the ideal world, they lose nothing of what they are ; they are found to be the same after as before the journey; they are, as before, greater or lesser forces, more or less resistant to attack, and ca- pable of effects more or less vast and profound. We now comprehend why the hierarchy of works of art repeats their hierarchy. At the apex of nature are sovereign forces which master all others; at the apex of art are masterpieces which surpass all others ; both heights are on a level, and the sovereign forces of nature are declared through the masterpieces of art 52. THE DEGREE OF BENEFICENCE IN THE OHABACTEB. ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 265 THERE is a second point of view from which characters ought to be compared. They are natural forces, and, in this respect, they may be estimated in two ways : we may consider a force, first, in relation to other forces, and next in re- lation to itself. Considered in relation to other forces it is greater when it resists them and nullifies them ; considered in relation to itself it is greater when the course of its effects leads it not to diminish but to increase itself. It thus finds two standards, because it is subjected to two tests, at first in undergoing the effect of other forces, and next in undergoing its own effect. The first examination has shown us the first test, and the higher or lower rank which characters bear according as they are more or less durable, and which, subjected to the same destructive causes, last longer and more intact. A second examination will show us the second test, and the more or less exalted position char- 266 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. acters obtain according as, abandoned to them* selves, they more or less completely end in an- nihilation, or in their own development through the annihilation or development of the individual and of the group in which they are comprised* In the first instance we have descended step by step toward those elementary forces which con- stitute the principle of nature itself, and you have seen the relationship between -art and science. In the second instance we shall ascend step by step toward those superior forms which are the object of nature and in which you will see the relationship of art with the moral order of things. We have considered characters according as they are more or less important; we are about to con- sider characters according as they are more or less beneficent. Let us commence with the moral man and with the works of art which express him. It is evident that the characters with which he is endowed are more or less beneficent, malevolent, or mixed. We see daily individuals and communities pros- per, add to their power, fail in their enterprises, ON THB IDEAL IN ART. 267 rain themselves and perish ; and each time if we view their life in its entirety we find that their fall is explained by some vice of general structure, by some exaggeration of a tendency, by the dis- proportion between a situation and an aptitude, in the same way as their success is caused by the stability of the inward balance, by the modera- tion of some craving or the energy of some facul- ty. In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface. Thus is a second scale established ; characters here are classified according as they are more or less baneful or beneficial to us through the magnitude of the help or hindrance which they contribute to our life in order to preserve or to destroy it The object, then, is to live, and, for the indi- vidual, life has two principal directions, knowl- edge and action ; and this is why we can distin- guish in him two principal faculties, intelligence and will. Hence it follows that all the characters of the will and of the understanding which aid 208 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. man in action and in knowledge are beneficent, and their opposites are malevolent. In the phi- losopher and the savant it is the exact observa- tion and memory of details joined to the prompt forecasting of general laws, and to the scrupulous prudence which subjects every supposition to the control of prolonged and methodical verifications. In the statesman and the business-man it is the tact of the pilot, always on the alert and always certain ; it is the tenacity of common sense, the constant adaptation of the mind to the variations of things, a sort of inward balance ready to test all circumjacent forces, an imagination limited and reduced to practical contrivances, the im- perturbable instinct of the possible and of the real. In the artist it is delicate sensibility, and vibrating sympathy, the inner and involuntary reproduction of things, the sudden and original comprehension of their dominant character with the spontaneous generation of all surrounding harmonies. You might find for each species of intellectual effort a group of analogous an 1 dis- tinct dispositions. These are so many forces ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 269 which lead man on to his ends, and it is cleat that each one in its domain is beneficent since its alteration, its insufficiency, or its absence brings to this domain impoverishment and sterility. In a like manner and in the same sense, the will is a power, and, considered in itself, a good. We admire the firm resolve which, once taken, maintains itself invincible against the pangs of physical pain, against the persistence of moral suffering, against the perturbations of sudden shocks, against the charm of tempting seductions, against every diversity of the ordeal by which, through violence or tenderness, through mental excitement or bodily weakness, it is attempted to overcome it. Whatever its support may be, whether the ecstasy of martyrs, the reason of stoics, the insensibility of savages, native stub- bornness, or acquired pride, it is beautiful ; and not merely is every phase of intelligence, lucidi- ty, genius, wit, reason, tact, delicacy, but again every phase of will, courage, the initiative, activ- ity, firmness, coolness, are fragments of the ideal man which we now seek to construct because 270 Otf TEE WEAL 12V AST. they are lines of this beneficent character which we have at first traced. "We must now view this man as he is classed. What is the disposition that is to render his life a benefit to the society in which he is comprised ? We are familiar with the inward instruments which are useful to him ; where is the internal spring which is to render him useful to others ? One there is which is unique, the faculty of loving ; for to love, is to have for one's end the happiness of another, to subordinate one's self to that other, and labor for and devote one's self to his welfare. You recognize there the highest of all beneficent characters. It is, evidently, the first of all in the scale that we are forming. We are all affected at its aspect, whatever may be its form, whether generosity, humanity, sweet- ness, tenderness, or native goodness. Our sym- pathy stirs in its presence, whatever its object may be, whether it constitutes love, properly so called the full surrender of one human being to another of the opposite sex, and the union of two lives bound up in one ; whether it culminates UA AHA WJSA, 12* AKT. 271 in diverse family affections that between pa- rents and children, or between brother and sis- ter; whether it produces strong friendship, perfect confidence, and the mutual fidelity 01 two men not bound together by the ides of blood. The more vast is its object, the more do we find it beautiful. It is because its beneficence ex- tends itself along with the group to which it is applied. Hence it is that in history and in life we reserve our greatest admiration for that de- votion which is rendered in behalf of general interests for patriotism such as was seen in Home in the time of Hannibal; in Athens, in the time of Themistocles ; in France, in 1792; and in Germany, in 1813 ; for the great senti- ment of universal charity, which has led Bud- dhist and Christian missionaries among barbarian people ; for that impassioned zeal which has sustained so many disinterested inventors, and excited in art, in science, in philosophy, in prac- tical life all beautiful and useful works and in- stitutions ; for all those superior virtues which, under the name of probity, justice, honor, self- 272 JV THE IDEAL IN AR1. sacrifice, and self-subordination to some high all-embracing conception, develops the civiliza- tion of humanity, and of which the stoics, Mar- cus Aurelius in the foremost rank, have given us both precept and example. I have no need to show you how, in the scale thus constructed, opposite characters occupy the reverse position. Long has this order of things been realized. The noble, moral theories of antiquity estab- lished it with an incomparable wise discernment and simplicity of method; Cicero, with a com- mon sense wholly Roman, has summed it up in his treatise on the " Offices." If subsequent ages have contributed to it further developments, they have mingled with these many errors ; and, in morality as in art, we have always to resort to the ancients in order to obtain our maxims. The philosophers of that period declared that the stoic made his soul and intellect conform to those of Jupiter;* the men of that day might have longed to have Jupiter make his soul and intellect conform to those of the stoic. ON THE IDEAL IX ARI. 273 n. To this classification of moral values corre- sponds, step by step, a classification of literary values. All things equal in other respects, the work which expresses a beneficent character, is superior to the work which expresses a malevo- lent character. If, in two given works, both exhibit, with the same talent in execution, nat- ural forces of like grandeur, that which repre- sents to us a hero is better than that which represents to us a dolt ; and in this gallery of living works of art, which form the definitive museum of the human mind, you will see estab- lished, according to our new principle, a new order of ranks. At the lowest step of all are the types pre- ferred by the literature of realism and by the comic drama ; that is to say, simpletons and egotists limited, weak and inferior natures. They are those, in fact, encountered in ordinary 274 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. life, or those that can be turned into ridicule Nowhere will you find a more complete assem- blage than in the " Scenes de la vie bourgeoise" of Henri Moimier. Almost all good romances thus recruit their secondary personages; such as the Sancho of Don Quixote ; the seedy sharpers of the picaresque romances ; Fielding's squires, parsons, and servants; and Walter Scott's shrewd lairds and rigid ministers ; all of that lower class of figures swarming in Balzac's Comedie Humaine, and in contemporary English literature, will supply us with further examples. These writers, undertaking to depict men as they are, were obliged to portray them incom- plete, mixed up and inferior, most of the time abortive in their character, or distorted by their condition. As to the comic drama it is sufficient to cite Turcaret, Basile, Orgon, Arnolphe, Har- pagon, Tartuffe, Georges Dandin, all of the mar- quises, valets, pedants, and doctors in Moliere. It is the quality of the comic drama to lay bare human deficiencies. Great artists, however, on whom the exigences of their class of subjects, or 02? THE IDEAL IN ART. 275 s love of stiict truth, imposed studies of this sad kind, have made use of two artifices to con- ceal the mediocrity and repulsiveness of the characters they have figured. They have either made of them accessories or contrasts, which serve to bring out some principal figure in stronger relief the most frequent proceeding of novelists and which you may study in the " Don Quixote" of Cervantes, in Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet," and in the "Madame Bovary" of Gustavo Flaubert ; or they have turned our sym- pathies against the personage, causing him to descend from one mishap to another, exciting against him the disapprobatory and vengeful laugh, purposely showing off the unlucky conse- quences of his inaptitude, and hunting out and expelling from life the defect which dominates in him. The spectator, become hostile, is satisfied ; he experiences the same pleasure in seeing folly and egotism crushed, as he does in seeing an expansion of goodness and strength; the ban- ishment of an evil is worth a triumph of the pood. This is the great resource of comedians. 276 ON THE IDEAL IN ART. but novelists likewise make use of it ; and yon may see its success not merely in the Precieuses, the "Ecole des Femmes," the "Femmes Sa- vantes," and numerous other pieces by Moliere, but again in the "Tom Jones" of Fielding, Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit," and in the " Yieille Fille" by Balzac. The spectacle, never- theless, of these belittled or crippled spirits ends by leaving in the reader's mind a vague senti- ment of weariness and disgust, and even irrita- tion and bitterness. When they are very nu- merous in a work, and occupy the prominent place, one is disheartened. Sterne, Swift, and the comic writers of the Restoration, many contemporary comedies and romances, the scenes of Henri Monnier, finally repel you; the ad- miration or approval of the reader gets to be mingled with repugnance; it is disagreeable to see vermin even when we kill it, and we de- mand that we be shown creations of a more vigorous birth and of loftier character. At this point of the scale is placed a family of powerful but incomplete types, and generally OX THE IDEAL IN ART. 277 wanting in balance. Some passion, some fac- ulty, some disposition or other of mind or of character is developed in them with enormous accretion, like a hypertrophied organ, at the ex- pense of the rest, amidst all sorts of ravages and misfortunes. Such is the ordinary theme of dramatic and philosophic literature ; for the per- sonages thus moulded are the best suited to fur- nish the writer with affecting and terrible cir- cumstances, with the collision and revolutions of sentiments, and the inward tribulation of which he has need for his drama ; and, on the other hand, they are the best adapted to manifest to the thinker the mechanisms of thought, the fatalities of organization, all the obscure forces which act in us without our consciousness of them, and which are the blind sovereigns of our being. You will find them among the Greek, Spanish, and French tragedians, in Lord Byron and Victor Hugo, in most of the great novelists, from Don Quixote down to "Werther and Madame Bovary. All those have set forth the dispropor- tion between man and himself, and with the 278 ON THE ILEAL IN ART. world, the dominion of some mastering passion or idea : in Greece, pride, revenge, warring rage, murderous ambition, filial vengeance, all the natural and spontaneous sentiments; in Spain and in France, chivalric honor, exalted love, re- ligious fervor, all the monarchical and cultivated sentiments ; and in Europe of our day, the inner malady of man discontented with himself and with society. But nowhere has this race of ve- hement and suffering spirits propagated itself in species more vigorous, more perfect, and more distinct than with the two great judges of man, Shakespeare and Balzac. That which they al- ways depict from choice is some gigantic force self-destructive or destructive of another. Ten times out of twelve the principal personage is a maniac or a knave ; he is endowed with the strongest and subtlest faculties, and sometimes with the most generous and most delicate senti- ments; but through a defectiveness of inward organization, or through lack of superior direc- tion, these forces either lead to his ruin, or un- chain themselves, to the detriment of others: ON THE IDEAL IN ART. 279 either the superb engine explodes, or it injures those it encounters on its way. In enumerating die heroes of Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Hotspur, Hamlet, Lear, Timon, Leontes, Macbeth, Othello, Antony, Cleopatra, Borneo, Juliet, Desdemona, Ophelia, we find all, the most heroic and the purest, swept away either by the fury of a blind imagination, the agitations of frenzied sensi- bility, the tyranny of flesh and blood, mental hallucination, or the irresistible flood of rage or of love, to which must be added the perverted and carnivorous souls who spring like lions on the human flock, lago, Bichard HE., and Lady Macbeth, all those who have expelled from their veins the last drop of " the milk of human kind- ness ;" and you will find in Balzac the two cor- responding groups of figures, on the one hand the monomaniacs Hulot, Clae's, Goriot, Cousin Pons, Louis Lambert, Grandet, Gobseck, Sarra- zine, Frauenhofer, Gambara, collectors, lovers, artists, and misers ; and on the other, the beasts of prey Nucingen, Vautrin, du Tillet, Pliilippe Bridau, Bastignac, du Marsay, an