Chapter XVIII: Part 18

But apart from criticisms like these on the theory of Schiller, the Kantian doctrine of a metaphysical opposition between the senses and the reason has for most minds of to-day lost its validity, and with it falls away Schiller's derivative theory of a _Stofftrieb_ and a _Formtrieb_ contending like enemies for dominion over the human spirit, with a neutral or reconciling _Spieltrieb_ standing between them. Even taking the existence of the _Spieltrieb_, or play-impulse, by itself as a plain and indubitable fact in human nature, the theory that this impulse is the general or universal source of the artistic activities of the race, which seemed adequate to thinkers so far apart as Schiller and Herbert Spencer, is found no longer to hold water. The tendency of recent thought and study on these subjects has been to abandon the abstract or dialectical method in favour of the methods of historical and anthropological inquiry. In the light of these methods it is claimed that the artistic activities of the race spring in point of fact from no single source but from a number of different sources. It is admitted that the play-impulse is one of these, and the allied and overlapping, but not identical, impulse of mimicry or imitation another. But it is urged at the same time that these twin impulses, rooted as they both are among the primordial faculties both of men and animals, are far from existing merely to provide a vent whereby the superfluous energies of sentient beings may discharge themselves at pleasure, but are indispensable utilitarian instincts, by which the young are led to practise and rehearse in sport those activities the exercise of which in earnest will be necessary to their preservation in the adult state. (The researches of Professor Karl Groos in this field seem to be conclusive.) A third impulse innate in man, though scarcely so primordial as the other two, and one which the animals cannot share with him, is the impulse of record or commemoration. Man instinctively desires, alike for safety, use and pleasure, to perpetuate and hand on the memory of his deeds and experiences whether by words or by works of his hands contrived for permanence. This impulse of record is the most stimulating ally of the impulse of mimicry or imitation, and perhaps a large part of the arts usually put down as springing from the love of imitation ought rather to be put down as springing from the commemorative or recording impulse, using imitation as its necessary means. Granting the existence in primitive man of these three allied impulses of play, of mimicry, and of record, it is urged that they are so many distinct though contiguous sources from which whole groups of the fine arts have sprung, and that all three in their origin served ends primarily or in great part utilitarian. Examining any of the rudimentary artistic activities of primitive man already mentioned: the decoration of the person with tattooings or strings of shells or teeth or feathers had primarily the object of attracting or impressing the opposite sex, or terrifying an enemy, or indicating the tribal relations of the person so adorned; some of the same purposes were served by the scratches and tufts and markings on weapons or utensils; the _graffiti_ or outline drawings of animals incised by cave-dwellers on bones are surmised to have sprung in like manner from the desire of conveying information, combined, probably, sometimes with that of obtaining magic power over the things represented; the erection of memorial shrines and images of all kinds, from the rudest upwards, had among other purposes the highly practical one of propitiating the spirits of the departed; and so on through the whole range of kindred activities. It is contended, next, that such activities only take on the character of rudimentary fine arts at a certain stage of their evolution. Before they can assume that character, they must come under the influence and control of yet another rooted and imperious impulse in mankind. That is the impulse of emotional self-expression, the instinct which compels us to seek relief under the stimulus of pent-up feeling; an instinct, it is added, second only in power to those which drive us to seek food, shelter, protection from enemies, and satisfaction for-sexual desires. According to a law of our constitution, the argument goes on, this need for emotional self-expression finds itself fully satisfied only by certain modes of activity; those, namely, which either have in themselves, or impress on their products, the property of rhythm, that is, of regular interval and recurrence, flow, order and proportion. Leaping, shouting, and clapping hands is the human animal's most primitive way of seeking relief under the pressure of emotion; so soon as one such animal found out that he both expressed and relieved his emotions best, and communicated them best to his fellows, when he moved in regular rhythm and shouted in regular time and with regular changes of pitch, he ceased to be a mere excited savage and became a primitive dancer, singer, musician--in a word, artist. So soon as another found himself taking pleasure in certain qualities of regular interval, pattern and arrangement of lines, shapes, and colours, apart from all questions of purpose or utility, in his tattooings and self-adornments, his decoration of tools or weapons or structures for shelter or commemoration, he in like manner became a primitive artist in ornamental and imitative design.

The special qualities of pleasure felt and communicated by doing things in one way rather than another, independently of direct utility, which we indicated at the outset as characteristic of the whole range of the fine arts, appear on this showing to be dependent primarily on the response of our organic sensibilities of nerve and muscle, eye, ear and brain to the stimulus of rhythm, (using the word in its widest sense) imparted either to our own actions and utterances or to the works of our hands. Such pleasures would seem to have been first experienced by man directly, in the endeavour to find relief with limbs and voice from states of emotional tension, and then incidentally, as a kind of by-product arising and affording similar relief in the development of a wide range of utilitarian activities. Into the nature of those organic sensibilities, and the grounds of the relief they afford us when gratified, it is the province of physiological and psychological aesthetics to inquire: our business here is only with the activities directed towards their satisfaction and the results of those activities in the works of fine art. On the whole the account of the matter yielded by the method of anthropological research, and here very briefly summarized, may be accepted as answering more closely to the complex nature of the facts than any of the accounts hitherto current; and so we may expand our first tentative suggestion of a definition into one more complete, which from the nature of the case cannot be very brief or simple and must run somehow thus: _Fine art is everything which man does or makes in one way rather than another, freely and with premeditation, in order to express and arouse emotion, in obedience to laws of rhythmic movement or utterance or regulated design, and with results independent of direct utility and capable of affording to many permanent and disinterested delight._

II. _Of the Fine Arts severally._

Modes in which the five greater arts have been classified.

_Architecture_, _sculpture_, _painting_, _music_ and _poetry_ are by common consent, as has been said at the outset, the five principal or greater fine arts practised among developed communities of men. It is possible in thought to group these five arts in as many different orders as there are among them different kinds of relation or affinity. One thinker fixes his attention upon one kind of relations as the most important, and arranges his group accordingly; another upon another; and each, when he has done so, is very prone to claim for his arrangement the virtue of being the sole essentially and fundamentally true. For example, we may ascertain one kind of relations between the arts by inquiring which is the simplest or most limited in its effects, which next simplest, which another degree less simple, which least simple or most complex of them all. This, the relation of progressive complexity or comprehensiveness between the fine arts, is the relation upon which Auguste Comte fixed his attention, and it yields in his judgment the following order:--Architecture lowest in complexity, because both of the kinds of effects which it produces and of the material conditions and limitations under which it works; sculpture next; painting third; then music; and poetry highest, as the most complex or comprehensive art of all, both in its own special effects and in its resources for ideally calling up the effects of all the other arts as well as all the phenomena of nature and experiences of life. A somewhat similar grouping was adopted, though from the consideration of a wholly different set of relations, by Hegel. Hegel fixed his attention on the varying relations borne by the idea, or spiritual element, to the embodiment of the idea, or material element, in each art. Leaving aside that part of his doctrine which concerns, not the phenomena of the arts themselves, but their place in the dialectical world-plan or scheme of the universe, Hegel said in effect something like this. In certain ages and among certain races, as in Egypt and Assyria, and again in the Gothic age of Europe, mankind has only dim ideas for art to express, ideas insufficiently disengaged and realized, of which the expression cannot be complete or lucid, but only adumbrated and imperfect; the characteristic art of those ages is a symbolic art, with its material element predominating over and keeping down its spiritual; and such a symbolic art is architecture. In other ages, as in the Greek age, the ideas of men have come to be definite, disengaged, and clear; the characteristic art of such an age will be one in which the spiritual and material elements are in equilibrium, and neither predominates over nor keeps down the other, but a thoroughly realized idea is expressed in a thoroughly adequate and lucid form; this is the mode of expression called classic, and the classic art is sculpture. In other ages, again, and such are the modern ages of Europe, the idea grows in power and becomes importunate; the spiritual and material elements are no longer in equilibrium, but the spiritual element predominates; the characteristic arts of such an age will be those in which thought, passion, sentiment, aspiration, emotion, emerge in freedom, dealing with material form as masters or declining its shackles altogether; this is the romantic mode of expression, and the romantic arts are painting, music and poetry. A later systematizer, Lotze, fixed his attention on the relative degrees of freedom or independence which the several arts enjoy--their freedom, that is, from the necessity of either imitating given facts of nature or ministering, as part of their task, to given practical uses. In his grouping, instead of the order architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, music comes first, because it has neither to imitate any natural facts nor to serve any practical end; architecture next, because, though it is tied to useful ends and material conditions, yet it is free from the task of imitation, and pleases the eye in its degree, by pure form, light and shade, and the rest, as music pleases the ear by pure sound; then, as arts all tied to the task of imitation, sculpture, painting and poetry, taken in progressive order according to the progressing comprehensiveness of their several resources.

Place of the minor or subordinate fine arts.

The thinker on these subjects has, moreover, to consider the enumeration and classification of the lesser or subordinate fine arts. Whole clusters or families of these occur to the mind at once; such as _dancing_, an art subordinate to music, but quite different in kind; _acting_, an art auxiliary to _poetry_, from which in kind it differs no less; _eloquence_ in all kinds, so far as it is studied and not merely spontaneous; and among the arts which fashion or dispose material objects, _embroidery_ and the weaving of patterns, _pottery_, _glassmaking_, _goldsmith's work_ and _jewelry_, _joiner's work_, _gardening_ (according to the claim of some), and a score of other dexterities and industries which are more than mere dexterities and industries because they add elements of beauty and pleasure to elements of serviceableness and use. To decide whether any given one of these has a right to the title of fine art, and, if so, to which of the greater fine arts it should be thought of as appended and subordinate, or between which two of them intermediate, is often no easy task.

No one classification final or sufficient.

The weak point of all classifications of the kind of which we have above given examples is that each is intended to be final, and to serve instead of any other. The truth is, that the relations between the several fine arts are much too complex for any single classification to bear this character. Every classification of the fine arts must necessarily be provisional, according to the particular class of relations which it keeps in view. And for practical purposes it is requisite to bear in mind not one classification but several. Fixing our attention, not upon complicated or problematical relations between the various arts, but only upon their simple and undisputed relations, and giving the first place in our consideration to the five greater arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry, we shall find at least three principal modes in which every fine art either resembles or differs from the rest.

First classification: the shaping and the speaking arts.

1. _The Shaping and the Speaking Arts_ (_or Arts of Form and Arts of
Utterance, or Arts of Space and Arts of Time)_.--Each of the greater
arts either makes something or not which can be seen and handled. The
arts which make something which can be seen and handled are
architecture, sculpture and painting. In the products or results of
all these arts external matter is in some way or another manually put
together, fashioned or disposed. But music and poetry do not produce
any results of this kind. What music produces is something that can be
heard, and what poetry produces is something that can be either heard
or read--which last is a kind of ideal hearing, having for its avenue
the eye instead of the ear, and for its material, written signs for
words instead of the spoken words themselves. Now what the eye sees
from any one point of view, it sees all at once; in other words, the
parts of anything we see fill or occupy not time but space, and reach
us from various points in space at a single simultaneous perception.
If we are at the proper distance we see at one glance a house from the
ground to the chimneys, a statue from head to foot, and in a picture
at once the foreground and background, and everything that is within
the four corners of the frame. There is, indeed, this distinction to
be drawn, that in walking round or through a temple, church, house or
any other building, new parts and proportions of the building unfold
themselves to view; and the same thing happens in walking round a
statue or turning it on a turntable: so that the spectator, by his own
motions and the time it takes to effect them, can impart to
architecture and sculpture something of the character of time arts.
But their products, as contemplated from any one point of view, are in
themselves solid, stationary and permanent in space. Whereas the parts
of anything we hear, or, reading, can imagine that we hear, fill or
occupy not space at all but time, and can only reach us from various
points in time through a continuous series of perceptions, or, in the
case of reading, of images raised by words in the mind. We have to
wait, in music, while one note follows another in a theme, and one
theme another in a movement; and in poetry, while one line with its
images follows another in a stanza, and one stanza another in a canto,
and so on. It is a convenient form of expressing both aspects of this
difference between the two groups of arts, to say that architecture,
sculpture and painting are arts which give shape to things in space,
or, more briefly, shaping arts; and music and poetry arts which give
utterance to things in time, or, more briefly, speaking arts. These
simple terms of the _shaping_ and the _speaking_ arts (the equivalent
of the Ger. _bildende und redende Kunste_) are not usual in English;
but they seem appropriate and clear; the simplest alternatives for
their use is to speak of the _manual_ and the _vocal_ arts, or the
arts of _space_ and the arts of _time_. This is practically, if not
logically, the most substantial and vital distinction upon which a
classification of the fine arts can be based. The arts which surround
us in space with stationary effects for the eye, as the house we live
in, the pictures on the walls, the marble figure in the vestibule, are
stationary, hold a different kind of place in our experience--not a
greater or a higher place, but essentially a different place--from the
arts which provide us with transitory effects in time, effects capable
of being awakened for the ear or mind at any moment, as a symphony is
awakened by playing and an ode by reading, but lying in abeyance until
we bid that moment come, and passing away when the performance or the
reading is over. Such, indeed, is the practical force of the
distinction that in modern usage the expression fine art, or even art,
is often used by itself in a sense which tacitly excludes music and
poetry, and signifies the group of manual or shaping arts alone.

Intermediate class of arts of motion.

As between three of the five greater arts and the other two, the
distinction on which we are now dwelling is complete. Buildings,
statues, pictures, belong strictly to sight and space; to time and to
hearing, real through the ear, or ideal through the mind in reading,
belong music and poetry. Among the lesser or subordinate arts,
however, there are several in which this distinction finds no place,
and which produce, in space and time at once, effects midway between
the stationary or stable, and the transitory or fleeting. Such is the
_dramatic_ art, in which the actor makes with his actions and
gestures, or several actors make with the combination of their
different actions and gestures, a kind of shifting picture, which
appeals to the eyes of the witnesses while the sung or spoken words of
the drama appeal to their ears; thus making of them spectators and
auditors at once, and associating with the pure time art of words the
mixed time-and-space art of bodily movements. As all movement
whatsoever is necessarily movement through space, and takes time to
happen, so every other fine art which is wholly or in part an act of
movement partakes in like manner of this double character. Along with
acting thus comes _dancing_. Dancing, when it is of the mimic
character, may itself be a kind of acting; historically, indeed, the
dancer's art was the parent of the actor's; whether apart from or in
conjunction with the mimic element, dancing is an art in which bodily
movements obey, accompany, and, as it were, express or accentuate in
space the time effects of music. _Eloquence_ or oratory in like
manner, so far as its power depends on studied and premeditated
gesture, is also an art which to some extent enforces its primary
appeal through the ear in time by a secondary appeal through the eye
in space. So much for the first distinction, that between the shaping
or space arts and the speaking or time arts, with the intermediate and
subordinate class of arts which, like acting, dancing, oratory, add to
the pure time element a mixed time-and-space element. These last can
hardly be called shaping arts, because it is his own person, and not
anything outside himself, which the actor, the dancer, the orator
disposes or adjusts; they may perhaps best be called arts of motion,
or moving arts.

Second classification: the imitative and non-imitative arts.

2. _The Imitative and the Non-Imitative Arts._--Each art either does
or does not represent or imitate something which exists already in
nature. Of the five greater fine arts, those which thus represent
objects existing in nature are sculpture, painting and poetry. Those
which do not represent anything so existing are music and
architecture. On this principle we get a new grouping. Two shaping or
space arts and one speaking or time art now form the imitative group
of sculpture, painting and poetry; while one space art and one time
art form the non-imitative group of music and architecture. The mixed
space-and-time arts of the actor, and of the dancer, so far as he or
she is also a mimic, belong, of course, by their very name and nature,
to the imitative class.

The imitative functions of art according to Aristotle.

It was the imitative character of the fine arts which chiefly occupied
the attention of Aristotle. But in order to understand the art
theories of Aristotle it is necessary to bear in mind the very
different meanings which the idea of imitation bore to his mind and
bears to ours. For Aristotle the idea of imitation or representation
(_mimesis_) was extended so as to denote the expressing, evoking or
making manifest of anything whatever, whether material objects or
ideas or feelings. Music and dancing, by which utterance or expression
is given to emotions that may be quite detached from all definite
ideas or images, are thus for him varieties of imitation. He says,
indeed, _most_ music and dancing, as if he was aware that there were
exceptions, but he does not indicate what the exceptions are; and
under the head of imitative music, he distinctly reckons some kinds of
instrumental music without words. But in our own more restricted
usage, to imitate means to copy, mimic or represent some existing
phenomenon, some definite reality of experience; and we can only call
those imitative arts which bring before us such things, either
directly by showing us their actual likeness, as sculpture does in
solid form, and as painting does by means of lines and colours on a
plane surface, or else indirectly, by calling up ideas or images of
them in the mind, as poetry and literature do by means of words. It is
by a stretch of ordinary usage that we apply the word imitation even
to this last way of representing things; since words are no true
likeness of, but only customary signs for, the thing they represent.
And those arts we cannot call imitative at all, which by combinations
of abstract sound or form express and arouse emotions unattended by
the recognizable likeness, idea or image of any definite thing.

Non-imitative character of music.

Now the emotions of music when music goes along with words, whether in
the shape of actual song or even of the instrumental accompaniment of
song, are no doubt in a certain sense attended with definite ideas;
those, namely, which are expressed by the words themselves. But the
same ideas would be conveyed to the mind equally well by the same
words if they were simply spoken. What the music contributes is a
special element of its own, an element of pure emotion, aroused
through the sense of hearing, which heightens the effect of the words
upon the feelings without helping to elucidate them for the
understanding. Nay, it is well known that a song well sung produces
its intended effect upon the feelings almost as fully though we fail
to catch the words or are ignorant of the language to which they
belong. Thus the view of Aristotle cannot be defended on the ground
that he was familiar with music only in an elementary form, and
principally as the direct accompaniment of words, and that in his day
the modern development of the art, as an art for building up
constructions of independent sound, vast and intricate fabrics of
melody and harmony detached from words, was a thing not yet imagined.
That is perfectly true; the immense technical and intellectual
development of music, both in its resources and its capacities, is an
achievement of the modern world; but the essential character of
musical sound is the same in its most elementary as in its most
complicated stage. Its privilege is to give delight, not by
communicating definite ideas, or calling up particular images, but by
appealing to certain organic sensibilities in our nerves of hearing,
and through such appeal expressing on the one part and arousing on the
other a unique kind of emotion. The emotion caused by music may be
altogether independent of any ideas conveyable by words. Or it may
serve to intensify and enforce other emotions arising at the same time
in connexion with the ideas conveyed by words; and it was one of the
contentions of Richard Wagner that in the former phase the art is now
exhausted, and that only in the latter are new conquests in store for
it. But in either case the music is the music, and _is like nothing
else_; it is no representation or similitude of anything whatsoever.

An objection and its answer.

But does not instrumental music, it will be said, sometimes really
imitate the sounds of nature, as the piping of birds, the whispering
of woods, the moaning of storms or explosion of thunder; or does it
not, at any rate, suggest these things by resemblances so close that
they almost amount in the strict sense to imitation? Occasionally, it
is true, music does allow itself these playful excursions into a
region of quasi-imitation or mimicry. It modifies the character of its
abstract sounds into something, so to speak, more concrete, and,
instead of sensations which are like nothing else, affords us
sensations which recognizably resemble those we receive from some of
the sounds of nature. But such excursions are hazardous, and to make
them often is the surest proof of vulgarity in a musician. Neither are
the successful effects of the great composers in evoking ideas of
particular natural phenomena generally in the nature of real
imitations or representations; although passages such as the notes of
the dove and nightingale in Haydn's _Creation_, and of the cuckoo in
Beethoven's _Pastoral Symphony_, the bleating of the sheep in the _Don
Quixote_ symphony of Richard Strauss, must be acknowledged to be
exceptions. Again, it is a recognized fact concerning the effect of
instrumental music on those of its hearers who try to translate such
effect into words, that they will all find themselves in tolerable
agreement as to the meaning of any passage so long as they only
attempt to describe it in terms of vague emotion, and to say such and
such a passage expresses, as the case may be, dejection or triumph,
effort or the relaxation of effort, eagerness or languor, suspense or
fruition, anguish or glee. But their agreement comes to an end the
moment they begin to associate, in their interpretation, definite
ideas with these vague emotions; then we find that what suggests in
idea to one hearer the vicissitudes of war will suggest to another, or
to the same at another time, the vicissitudes of love, to another
those of spiritual yearning and aspiration, to another, it may be,
those of changeful travel by forest, field and ocean, to another those
of life's practical struggle and ambition. The infinite variety of
ideas which may thus be called up in different minds by the same
strain of music is proof enough that the music is not _like_ any
particular thing. The torrent of varied and entrancing emotion which
it pours along the heart, emotion latent and undivined until the spell
of sound begins, that is music's achievement and its secret. It is
this effect, whether coupled or not with a trained intellectual
recognition of the highly abstract and elaborate nature of the laws of
the relation, succession and combinations of sounds on which the
effect depends, that has caused some thinkers, with Schopenhauer at
their head, to find in music the nearest approach we have to a voice
from behind the veil, a universal voice expressing the central purpose
and deepest essence of things, unconfused by fleeting actualities or
by the distracting duty of calling up images of particular and
perishable phenomena. "Music," in Schopenhauer's own words, "reveals
the innermost essential being of the world, and expresses the highest
wisdom in a language the reason does not understand."

Definition of music.

Aristotle endeavoured to frame a classification of the arts, in their
several applications and developments, on two grounds--the nature of
the objects imitated by each, and the means or instruments employed in
the imitation. But in the case of music, as it exists in the modern
world, the first part of this endeavour falls to the ground, because
the object imitated has, in the sense in which we now use the word
imitation, no existence. The means employed by music are successions
and combinations of vocal or instrumental sounds regulated according
to the three conditions of time and pitch (which together make up
melody) and harmony, or the relations of different strains of time and
tone cooperant but not parallel. With these means, music either
creates her independent constructions, or else accompanies, adorns,
enforces the imitative art of speech--but herself imitates not; and
may be best defined simply as _a speaking or time art, of which the
business is to express and arouse emotion by successions and
combinations of regulated sound_.

Non-imitative character of architecture.

That which music is thus among the speaking or time-arts, architecture
is among the shaping or space-arts. As music appeals to our faculties
for taking pleasure in non-imitative combinations of transitory sound,
so architecture appeals to our faculties for taking pleasure in
non-imitative combinations of stationary mass. Corresponding to the
system of ear-effects or combinations of time, tone and harmony with
which music works, architecture works with a system of eye-effects or
combinations of mass, contour, light and shade; colour, proportion,
interval, alternation of plain and decorated parts, regularity and
variety in regularity, apparent stability, vastness, appropriateness
and the rest. Only the materials of architecture are not volatile and
intangible like sound, but solid timber, brick, stone, metal and
mortar, and the laws of weight and force according to which these
materials have to be combined are much more severe and cramping than
the laws of melody and harmony which regulate the combinations of
music. The architect is further subject, unlike the musician, to the
dictates and precise prescriptions of utility. Even in structures
raised for purposes not of everyday use and necessity, but of
commemoration or worship, the rules for such commemoration and such
worship have prescribed a more or less fixed arrangement and
proportion of the parts or members, whether in the Egyptian temple or
temple-tomb, the Greek temple or heroon, or in the churches of the
middle ages and Renaissance in the West.

Analogies of architecture and music.

Hence the effects of architecture are necessarily less full of
various, rapturous and unforeseen enchantment than the effects of
music. Yet for those who possess sensibility to the pleasures of the
eye and the perfections of shaping art, the architecture of the great
ages has yielded combinations which, so far as comparison is
permissible between things unlike in their materials, fall little
short of the achievements of music in those kinds of excellence which
are common to them both. In the virtues of lucidity, of just
proportion and organic interdependence of the several parts or
members, in the mathematic subtlety of their mutual relations, and of
the transitions from one part or member to another, in purity and
finish of individual forms, in the character of one thing growing
naturally out of another and everything serving to complete the
whole--in these qualities, no musical combination can well surpass a
typical Doric temple such as the Parthenon at Athens. None, again, can
well surpass some of the great cathedrals of the middle ages in the
qualities of sublimity, of complexity, in the power both of expressing
and suggesting spiritual aspiration, in the invention of intricate
developments and ramifications about a central plan, in the union of
majesty in the main conception with fertility of adornment in detail.
In fancifulness, in the unexpected, in capricious and far-sought
opulence, in filling the mind with mingled enchantments of east and
west and south and north, music can hardly do more than a building
like St Mark's at Venice does with its blending of Byzantine elements,
Italian elements, Gothic elements, each carried to the utmost pitch of
elaboration and each enriched with a hundred caprices of ornament, but
all working together, all in obedience to a law, and "all beginning
and ending with the Cross."

Exceptional and limited admission of imitative forms in architecture.

In the case of architecture, however, as in the case of music, the
non-imitative character must not be stated quite without exception or
reserve. There have been styles of architecture in which forms
suggesting or imitating natural or other phenomena have held a place
among the abstract forms proper to the art. Often the mode of such
suggestions is rather symbolical to the mind than really imitative to
the eye; as when the number and relations of the heavenly planets were
imaged by that race of astronomers, the Babylonians, in the seven
concentric walls of their great temple, and in many other
architectural constructions; or as when the shape of the cross was
adopted, with innumerable slight varieties and modifications, for the
ground plan of the churches of Christendom. Passing to examples of
imitation more properly so called, it may be true, and was, at any
rate, long believed, that the aisles of Gothic churches, when once the
use of the pointed arch had been evolved as a principle of
construction, were partly designed to evoke the idea of the natural
aisles of the forest, and that the upsoaring forest trunks and
meeting branches were more or less consciously imaged in their piers
and vaultings. In the temple-palaces of Egypt, one of the regular
architectural members, the sustaining pier, is often systematically
wrought in the actual likeness of a conventionalized cluster of lotus
stems, with lotus flowers for the capital. When we come to the
fashion, not rare in Greek architecture, of carving this same
sustaining member, the column, in complete human likeness, and
employing caryatids, canephori, atlases or the like, to support the
entablature of a building, it then becomes difficult to say whether we
have to do with a work of architecture or of sculpture. The case, at
any rate, is different from that in which the sculptor is called in to
supply surface decoration to the various members of a building, or to
fill with the products of his own art spaces in the building specially
contrived and left vacant for that purpose. When the imitative feature
is in itself an indispensable member of the architectural
construction, to architecture rather than sculpture we shall probably
do best to assign it.

Definition of architecture.

Defining architecture, then (apart from its utility, which for the
present we leave out of consideration), as _a shaping art, of which
the function is to express and arouse emotion by combinations of
ordered and decorated mass_, we pass from the characteristics of the
non-imitative to those of the imitative group of arts, namely
sculpture, painting and poetry.

The imitative arts are arts of record using imitation as their means.

If we keep in mind the source and origin of these arts, we must
remember what has already been observed, that they spring by no means
from man's love of imitation alone, but from his desire to record and
commemorate experience, using the faculty of imitation as his means.
Mnemosyne (Memory) was in Greek tradition the mother of the Muses;
imitation, in the sense above defined, is but their instrument. Hence
we might think "arts of record" a better name for this group than arts
of imitation. The answer is--but a large part of pure architecture is
also commemorative; from the pyramids and obelisks of Egypt down there
are many monuments in which the impulse of men to perpetuate their own
or others' memories has worked without any aid of imitation. Hence as
the definition of a class of arts contrasted with architecture and
music the name "arts of record" would fail; and we have to fall back
on the current and established name of the "imitative arts." In
considering them we cannot do better than follow that Aristotelian
division which describes each art according, first, to the objects
which it imitates, and, secondly, to the means it employs.

Sculpture as an imitative art.

Taking sculpture first, as imitating a smaller range of objects than
the other two, and imitating them more completely: sculpture may have
for the objects of its imitation the shapes of whatever things possess
length, breadth and magnitude. For its means or instruments it has
solid form, which the sculptor either carves out of a hard substance,
as in the case of wood and stone, or models in a yielding substance,
as in the case of clay and wax, or casts in a dissolved or molten
substance, as in the case of plaster and of metal in certain uses, or
beats, draws or chases in a malleable and ductile substance, as in the
case of metal in other uses, or stamps from dies or moulds, a method
sometimes used in all soft or fusible materials. Thus a statue or
statuette may either be carved straight out of a block of stone or
wood, or first modelled in clay or wax, then moulded in plaster or
some equivalent material, and then carved in stone or cast in bronze.
A gem is wrought in stone by cutting and grinding. Figures in
jeweller's work are wrought by beating and chasing; a medallion by
beating and chasing or else by stamping from a die; a coin by stamping
from a die; and so forth. The process of modelling (Gr. [Greek:
plattein]) in a soft substance being regarded as the typical process
of the sculptor, the name _plastic art_ has been given to his
operations in general.

Sculpture in the round and in relief.

In general terms, the task of sculpture is to imitate solid form with
solid form. But sculptured form may be either completely or
incompletely solid. Sculpture in completely solid form exactly
reproduces, whether on the original or on a different scale, the
relations or proportions of the object imitated in the three
dimensions of length, breadth and depth or thickness. Sculpture in
incompletely solid form reproduces the proportions of the objects with
exactness only so far as concerns two of its dimensions, namely, those
of length and breadth; while the third dimension, that of depth or
thickness, it reproduces in a diminished proportion, leaving it to the
eye to infer, from the partial degree of projection given to the work,
the full projection of the object imitated. The former, or completely
solid kind of sculpture, is called sculpture in the round; its works
stand free, and can be walked round and seen from all points. The
latter, or incompletely solid kind of sculpture, is called sculpture
in relief; its works do not stand free, but are engaged in or attached
to a background, and can only be seen from in front. According, in the
latter kind of sculpture, to its degree of projection from the
background, a work is said to be in high or in low relief. Sculpture
in the round and sculpture in relief are alike in this, that the
properties of objects which they imitate are their external forms as
defined by their outlines--that is, by the boundaries and
circumscriptions of their masses--and their light and shade--the
lights and shadows, that is, which diversify the curved surfaces of
the masses in consequence of their alternations and gradations of
projection and recession. But the two kinds of sculpture differ in
this. A work of sculpture in the round imitates the whole of the
outlines by which the object imitated is circumscribed in the three
dimensions of space, and presents to the eye, as the object itself
would do, a new outline succeeding the last every moment as you walk
round it. Whereas a work of sculpture in relief imitates only one
outline of any object; it takes, so to speak, a section of the object
as seen from a particular point, and traces on the background the
boundary-line of that particular section, merely suggesting, by
modelling the surface within such boundary according to a regular, but
a diminished, ratio of projection, the other outlines which the object
would present if seen from all sides successively.

Subjects proper for sculpture in the round.

As sculpture in the round reproduces the real relations of a solid
object in space, it follows that the only kind of object which it can
reproduce with pleasurable effect according to the laws of regulated
or rhythmical design must be one not too vast or complicated, one that
can afford to be detached and isolated from its surroundings, and of
which all the parts can easily be perceived and apprehended in their
organic relations. Further, it will need to be an object interesting
enough to mankind in general to make them take delight in seeing it
reproduced with all its parts in complete imitation. And again, it
must be such that some considerable part of the interest lies in those
particular properties of outline, play of surface, and light and shade
which it is the special function of sculpture to reproduce. Thus a
sculptured representation in the round, say, of a mountain with cities
on it, would hardly be a sculpture at all; it could only be a model,
and as a model might have value; but value as a work of fine art it
could not have, because the object imitated would lack organic
definiteness and completeness; it would lack universality of interest,
and of the interest which it did possess, a very inconsiderable part
would depend upon its properties of outline, surface, and light and
shade. Obviously there is no kind of object in the world that so well
unites the required conditions for pleasurable imitation in sculpture
as the human body. It is at once the most complete of organisms, and
the shape of all others the most subtle as well as the most
intelligible in its outlines; the most habitually detached in active
or stationary freedom; the most interesting to mankind, because its
own; the richest in those particular effects, contours and
modulations, contrasts, harmonies and transitions of modelled surface
and circumscribing line, which it is the prerogative of sculpture to
imitate. Accordingly the object of imitation for this art is
pre-eminently the body of man or woman. That it has not been for the
sake of representing men and women as such, but for the sake of
representing gods in the likeness of men and women, that the human
form has been most enthusiastically studied, does not affect this fact
in the theory of the art, though it is a consideration of great
importance in its history. Besides the human form, sculpture may
imitate the forms of those of the lower animals whose physical
endowments have something of a kindred perfection, with other natural
or artificial objects as may be needed merely by way of accessory or
symbol. The body must for the purposes of this art be divested of
covering, or covered only with such tissues as reveal, translate or
play about without concealing it. Chiefly in lands and ages where
climate and social use have given the sculptor the opportunity of
studying human forms so draped or undraped has this art attained
perfection, and become exemplary and enviable to that of other races.

Subjects proper for sculpture in relief.

Relief sculpture is more closely connected with architecture than the
other kind, and indeed is commonly used in subordination to it. But if
its task is thus somewhat different from that of sculpture in the
round, its principal objects of imitation are the same. The human body
remains the principal theme of the sculptor in relief; but the nature
of his art allows, and sometimes compels, him to include other objects
in the range of his imitation. As he has not to represent the real
depth or projection of things, but only to suggest them according to a
ratio which he may fix himself, so he can introduce into the third or
depth dimension, thus arbitrarily reduced, a multitude of objects for
which the sculptor in the round, having to observe the real ratio of
the three dimensions, has no room. He cam place one figure in slightly
raised outline emerging from behind the more fully raised outline of
another, and by the same system can add to his representation rocks,
trees, nay mountains and cities and birds on the wing. But the more he
uses this liberty the less will he be truly a sculptor. Solid
modelling, and real light and shade, are the special means or
instrument of effect which the sculptor alone among imitative artists
enjoys. Single outlines and contours, the choice of one particular
section and the tracing of its circumscription, are means which the
sculptor enjoys in common with the painter or draughtsman. And indeed,
when we consider works executed wholly or in part in very low relief,
whether Assyrian battle-pieces and hunting-pieces in alabaster or
bronze, or the backgrounds carved in bronze, marble or wood by the
Italian sculptors who followed the example set by Ghiberti at the
Renaissance, we shall see that the principle of such work is not the
principle of sculpture at all. Its effect depends little on qualities
of surface-light and shadow, and mainly on qualities of contour, as
traced by a slight line of shadow on the side away from the light, and
a slight line of light on the side next to it. And we may fairly
hesitate whether we shall rank the artist who works on this principle,
which is properly a graphic rather than a plastic principle, among
sculptors or among draughtsmen. The above are cases in which the
relief sculptor exercises his liberty in the introduction of other
objects besides human figures into his sculptured compositions. But
there is another kind of relief sculpture in which the artist has less
choice. That is, the kind in which the sculptor is called in to
decorate with carved work parts of an architectural construction which
are not adapted for the introduction of figure subjects, or for their
introduction only as features in a scheme of ornament that comprises
many other elements. To this head belongs most of the carving of
capitals, mouldings, friezes (except the friezes of Greek temples),
bands, cornices, and, in the Gothic style, of doorway arches, niches,
canopies, pinnacles, brackets, spandrels and the thousand members and
parts of members which that style so exquisitely adorned with true or
conventionalized imitations of natural forms. This is no doubt a
subordinate function of the art; and it is impossible, as we have seen
already, to find a precise line of demarcation between carving, in
this decorative use, which is properly sculpture, and that which
belongs properly to architecture.

Definition of sculpture.

Leaving such discussions, we may content ourselves with the definition
of sculpture as _a shaping art, of which the business is to express
and arouse emotion by the imitation of natural objects, and
principally the human body, in solid form, reproducing either their
true proportions in three dimensions, or their proportions in the two
dimensions of length and breadth only, with a diminished proportion in
the third dimension of depth or thickness._

Painting as an imitative art.

In considering bas-relief as a form of sculpture, we have found
ourselves approaching the confines of the second of the shaping
imitative arts, the graphic art or art of painting. Painting, as to
its means or instruments of imitation, dispenses with the third
dimension altogether. It imitates natural objects by representing them
as they are represented on the retina of the eye itself, simply as an
assemblage of variously shaped and variously shaded patches of colour
on a flat surface. Painting does not reproduce the third dimension of
reality by any third dimension of its own whatever; but leaves the eye
to infer the solidity of objects, their recession and projection,
their nearness and remoteness, by the same perspective signs by which
it also infers those facts in nature, namely, by the direction of
their several boundary lines, the incidence and distribution of their
lights and shadows, the strength or faintness of their tones of
colour.

Range of objects imitable by painting.

Hence this art has an infinitely greater range and freedom than any
form of sculpture. Near and far is all the same to it, and whatever
comes into the field of vision can come also into the field of a
picture; trees as well as persons, and clouds as well as trees, and
stars as well as clouds; the remotest mountain snows, as well as the
violet of the foreground, and far-off multitudes of people as well as
one or two near the eye. Whatever any man has seen, or can imagine
himself as seeing, that he can also fix by painting, subject only to
one great limitation,--that of the range of brightness which he is
able to attain in imitating natural colour illuminated by light. In
this particular his art can but correspond according to a greatly
diminished ratio with the effects of nature. But excepting this it can
do for the eye almost all that nature herself does; or at least all
that nature would do if man had only one eye since the three
dimensions of space produce upon our binocular machinery of vision a
particular stereoscopic effect of which a picture, with its two
dimensions only, is incapable. The range of the art being thus almost
unbounded, its selections have naturally been dictated by the varying
interest felt in this or that subject of representation by the
societies among whom the art has at various times been practised. As
in sculpture, so in painting, the human form has always held the first
place. For the painter, the intervention of costume between man and
his environment is not a misfortune in the same degree as it is for
the sculptor. For him, clothes of whatever fashion or amplitude have
their own charm; they serve to diversify the aspect of the world, and
to express the characters and stations, if not the physical frames, of
his personages; and he is as happy or happier among the brocades of
Venice as among the bare limbs of the Spartan palaestra. Along with
man, there come into painting all animals and vegetation, all man's
furniture and belongings, his dwelling-places, fields and landscape;
and in modern times also landscape and nature for their own sakes,
skies, seas, mountains and wildernesses apart from man.

The chief forms or modes of painting: line, light-and-shade and
colour.