Chapter I

Any expression of a humanistic society through the arts depends upon the acceptance by the artist of some sort of central authority. The authority is not that of official organisations or written codes; it is rather that of approved traditional ideals in which both the artist and the laity believe. In their application to the work of art, such ideals appear concretely as accredited conventions. In a humanistic society, these conventions assume no burdensome or arbitrarily authoritative form. They represent merely a body of successful experience--ways that have been tried and found good. The accepted convention tells the artist how he must begin; it does not tell him how he must end. It does, however, warn him off from any too abrupt breaking with tradition, and from any too urgent assertion of his individual taste save in so far as that taste finds sanction in precedent and in opinion other than his own. Right here is the stone of stumbling. The humanist artist willingly admits that his own genius is not his final authority. He checks its impulses by the practice and teaching of other geniuses, and by the degree of acceptance which its expression commands from competent criticism and patronage. It is not enough that he shall have expressed just himself; it matters quite as much that he shall have communicated himself to a fit public with whom he shares a confidence in the guiding conventions of his art and in ideals mutually honoured.

On the side of the artist, this relation will indicate a procedure of delicate adjustment. The accepted conventions of his art and the ideals of the society for which he works, will of course not fit him precisely any more than a ready-made suit fits perfectly either the artist or layman. The practical problem of the humanist artist, then, will be how far he shall reshape himself to the expectations of his public; and how far he may change these expectations in a sense favourable to his individual bent. And this implies chiefly a very superior sort of judgment and common sense. The humanist artist will feel that it is a vain thing to have expressed himself, however gorgeously, if nobody knows that he has expressed himself, and he will also admit that the mere feelingful and urgent self gains richness and value only when it is measured by other selves in society.

On the side of society and patronage, a humanised art would imply in practice a central authority lightly and genially imposed, a just offishness towards the artists who too overtly repudiated the tradition, withal a somewhat sceptical hopefulness towards experiment and innovation, a hospitable desire to understand the artist even when his communication is obscure, a wish to have its own ideals expressed through the arts. In short a humanised society co-operates with the artist to a degree difficult even to imagine to-day. It provides him with incentive, furnishes most of his æsthetic notions, helps him to realise himself through opportune criticism and companionship, thus taking an active part in what is the essential thing--the formation of his spirit.

So far I have dealt in convenient abstractions which are in part misleading. I have made the reciprocal relation between the artist and public too conscious, much more conscious than it has been in history. I shall presently try to correct the error by appealing to precedents concretely in given time and place. However, the over-emphasis on consciousness as producing mutuality between artist and public may well be pragmatically justified. It seems unlikely that our society will simply gravitate towards humanism. On the contrary, if we are to achieve a humanistic social balance, it will apparently be done only through much taking of thought, on the part of both the enlightened laity and the intelligent artist. So the analysis I have tried to make of the mutually helpful relation of artist and layman in a humanised world, though it overstresses the conscious element in this reciprocity in seeming disregard of past history, may for that very reason suggest a programme for history yet to be realised.

Programmes, however, are entirely valueless except as they rest soundly on dynamic states of mind. Our problem as humanists is to create a state of mind in which neither artist nor layman will exaggerate the worth of his idiosyncrasy, nor yet follow the general drift unthinkingly. We are trying to make a man who is a friendly critic both of himself and of the society in which he moves, a man who accepts the growing complexity of living as offering him fascinating and profitable problems of adjustment. To maintain this hope in the face of the chicken-and-lobster-eating motorist, the radio fan, the devotee of the “talkies,” the sycophant artist who bows to base authority, and the behaviourist artist who admits none but that of his own glands--to keep the hope of making humanists in the face of the daily American spectacle requires an audacity which even the Expressionist might envy. But we contributors to this symposium have actually seen a few humanists made, have helped a little to make them perhaps; and we are dealing with spiritual values which transcend ordinary statistics. A few thousand genuine humanists in America would make our society humanistic; a hundred humanist painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, and men of letters would make our art solidly humanistic. In this hope we keep our tiny banner up beside the hoardings that promise to beautify our teeth, remove our corns, clothe our bodies appealingly, or incase the relentlessly exposed legs of our women in silk as durable as filmy.