Chapter VII: Part II: Deductions from Part I (2)

Still, in all concepts of beauty, however widely separated and however diametrically opposed, there is this common factor: that the beautiful person is the outcome of a long observance through generations of the values peculiar to a people. A certain regularity of form and feature, whether this form and feature be Arab, Ethiopian or Jewish, is indicative of a certain regular mode of life which has lasted for generations; and in calling this indication beautiful, a people once more affirms itself and its values. If the creature manifesting this regularity be a Chinaman, he will be the most essential Chinaman that the Chinese values can produce; his face will reveal no fighting and discordant values; there will be no violent contrasts of type in his features, and, relative to Chinese values, his face will be the most regular and harmonious that can be seen, and therefore the most beautiful.[62] The Chinese ruler-artist, in representing a mediocre Chinaman, would therefore exercise his transfiguring powers to overcome any discordant features in the face before him, and would thus produce a beautiful type.[63] Or, if his model happened to be the highest product of Chinese values, his object would be to transcend even that, and to point to something higher.

Once again, therefore, though it is impossible to posit a universal concept of subject-beauty, various concepts may be given an order of rank, subject to the values with which they happen to be associated.

[54] If this book be read in conjunction with my monograph on _Nietzsche: his Life and Works_ (Constable), or my _Who is to be Master of the World?_ (Foulis), there ought to be no difficulty in understanding this point.

[55] B. Bosanquet, _A History of Æsthetic_, p. 4.

[56] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 246. See also _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 19: "The 'beautiful in itself' is merely an expression, not even a concept."

[57] _T. I._, Part 10, Apr. 19: "In the beautiful, man posits himself as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in that standard. A species _cannot_ possibly do otherwise than thus say yea to itself."

[58] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 361: "Legislative moralities are the principal means by which one can form mankind, according to the fancy of a creative and profound will: provided, of course, that such an artistic will of the first order gets the power into its own hands, and can make its creative will prevail over long periods in the form of legislation, religions, and morals." See p. 79 in the first part of this lecture.

[59] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 185.

[60] _G. E._, p. 107: "The essential thing 'in heaven and earth' is, apparently, that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine."

[61] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 24.

[62] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 47: "Even the beauty of a race or family, the pleasantness and kindness of their whole demeanour, is acquired by effort; like genius, it is the final result of the accumulated labour of generations. There must have been great sacrifices made to good taste; for the sake of it, much must have been done, and much refrained from--the seventeenth century in France is worthy of admiration in both ways; good taste must then have been a principle of selection, for society, place, dress, and sexual gratification, beauty must have been preferred to advantage, habit, opinion, indolence. Supreme rule:--we must not 'let ourselves go,' even when only in our own presence.--Good things are costly beyond measure, and the rule always holds, that he who possesses them is other than he who acquires them. All excellence is inheritance; what has not been inherited is imperfect, it is a beginning."

[63] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 245: "'Beauty,' therefore, is, to the artist, something which is above order of rank, because in beauty contrasts are overcome, the highest sign of power thus manifesting itself in the conquest of opposites; and achieved without a feeling of tension." See also Hegel, _Vorlesungen über Æsthetik_, Vol. I, pp. 130, 144.

7. The Meaning of Ugliness of Form and of Ugliness of Content in Art.

Ugliness in Art, therefore, is Art's contradiction.[67] It is the absence of Art. It is a sign that the simplifying, ordering and transfiguring power of the artist has not been successful, and that chaos, disorder and complexity have not been overcome.

Ugliness of form in Art, therefore, will tend to become prevalent in democratic times; because it is precisely at such times that a general truth for all is believed in, and, since reality is the only truth which can be made common to all, democratic art is invariably realistic, and therefore, according to my definition of the beautiful in form, ugly.

In this matter, I do not ask you to take my views on trust. A person who will seem to you very much more authoritative than myself--a man who once had the honour of influencing Whistler, and who, by the bye, is also famous for having flung down the Colonne Vendôme in Paris-- once expressed himself quite categorically on this matter.

At the Congress of Antwerp in 1861, after he had criticized other artists and other concepts of art, this man concluded his speech as follows: "By denying the ideal and all that it involves, I attain to the complete emancipation of the individual, and finally to democracy. Realism is essentially democratic."[68]

As you all must know, this man was Gustave Courbet, of whom Muther said that he had a predilection for the ugly.[69]

Artists infected with the pure or the corrupt layman's view of Art, as described in the previous section, and artists obsessed by the Christian or scientific notion of truth, will consequently produce ugly work. They will be realists, or Police-artists, and consequently ugly.

But how can content- or subject-ugliness be understood? Content- or subject-ugliness is the decadence of a type.[70] It is the sign that certain features, belonging to other peoples (hitherto called ugly according to the absolute biological standard of beauty of a race), are beginning to be introduced into their type. Or it may mean that the subject to be represented does not reveal that harmony and lack of contrasts which the values of a people are capable of producing. In each case it provokes hatred, and this "hatred is inspired by the most profound instinct of the species; there is horror, foresight, profundity, and far-reaching vision in it--it is the profoundest of all hatreds. On account of it art is _profound_."[71]

The hatred amounts to a condemnation of usurping values, or of discordant values; in fact, to a condemnation of dissolution and anarchy, and the judgment "ugly" is of the most serious import.

Thus, although few of us can agree to-day as to what constitutes a beautiful man or woman, there is still a general idea common to us all, that a certain regularity of features constitutes beauty, and that, with this beauty, a certain reliable, harmonious, and calculable nature will be present. Spencer said the wisest thing in all his philosophy when he declared that "the saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying."[72]

For beauty in any human creature, being the result of a long and severe observance by his ancestors of a particular set of values, always denotes some definite attitude towards Life; it always lures to some particular kind of life and joy--as Stendhal said, "Beauty is a promise of happiness"--and as such it seduces to Life and to this earth.

This explains why beauty is regarded with suspicion by negative religions, and why it tends to decline in places where the sway of a negative religion is powerful. Because a negative religion cannot tolerate that which lures to life, to the body, to joy and to voluptuous ecstasy.

It is upon their notion of spiritual beauty, upon passive virtues, that the negative religions lay such stress, and thus they allow the ugly to find pedestals in their sanctuaries more easily than the beautiful.

[67] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 252.

[68] A. Estignard, _Gustave Courbet_ (Paris, 1896), p. 118.

[69] _Geschichte der Malerei_, Vol. III, p. 204.

[70] _W. P._, Vol. II, pp. 241, 242, 245. See also T. I., Part 10, Aph. 20: "The ugly is understood as a sign and symptom of degeneration; that which reminds us in the remotest manner of degeneracy prompts us to pronounce the verdict 'ugly.' Every indication of exhaustion, gravity, age or lassitude; every kind of constraint, such as cramp or paralysis; and above all the odour, the colour, and the likeness of decomposition or putrefaction, be it utterly attenuated even to a symbol:--all these things call forth a similar reaction, the evaluation 'ugly.' A hatred is there excited: whom does man hate there? There can be no doubt: _the decline of his type_."

[71] _T. I._, Part 10, Aph. 20.

[72] _Essays_, Vol. II (1901 Edition), p. 394.

8. The Ruler-Artist's Style and Subject.

Up to the present, you have doubtless observed that I have spoken only of man as the proper subject-matter of the graphic Arts. In maintaining this, Nietzsche not only has Goethe and many lesser men on his side, but he has also the history of Art in general. I cannot, however, show you yet how, or in what manner, animal-painting, landscape-painting, and, in some respects, portrait-painting are to be placed lower than the art which concerns itself with man. Let it therefore suffice, for the present, simply to recognize the fact that Nietzsche did take up this attitude, and leave the more exhaustive discussion of it to the next part of this lecture.

Now, eliminating for a moment all those pseudo-artists who have been reared by the two strongest public demands on the Art of the present age--I speak of portrait-painting and dining-room pictures--there remains a class of artists which still shows signs of raising its head here and there, though every year with less frequency, and this is the class which, for want of a better term, we call Ruler-artists.

As I say, they are becoming extremely rare; their rarity, which may be easily accounted for,[73] is one of the evil omens of the time.

The ruler-artist is he who, elated by his own health and love of Life, says "Yea" to his own type and proclaims his faith or confidence in it, against all other types; and who, in so doing, determines or accentuates the values of that type. If he prevails in concepts in so doing, he also ennobles and embellishes the type he is advocating.

He is either the maker or the highest product of an aspiring and an ascending people. In him their highest values find their most splendid bloom. In him their highest values find their strongest spokesman. And in his work they find the symbol of their loftiest hopes.

By the beauty which his soul reflects upon the selected men he represents in his works, he establishes an order of rank among his people, and puts each in his place.

The spectator who is very much beneath the beauty of the ruler-artist's masterpieces feels his ignominious position at a glance. He realizes the impassable gulf that is for ever fixed between himself and that! And this sudden revelation tells him his level. Such a man, after he has contemplated the ruler-artist's work, may rush headlong to the nearest river and drown himself. His despair may be so great when he realizes the impossibility of ever reaching the heights he has been contemplating, that he may immolate himself on the spot. Only thus can the world be purged of the many-too-many.

"Unto many life is a failure," says Zarathustra, "a poisonous worm eating through into their heart. These ought to see to it that they succeed better in dying.

"Many-too-many live.... Would that preachers of swift death might arise! They would be the proper storms to shake the trees of life."[74]

In the presence of beauty, alone, can one know one's true rank, and this explains why the Japanese declare that "until a man has made himself beautiful he has no right to approach beauty,"[75] for "great art is that before which we long to die."[76]

But, to those who see but the smallest chance of approaching it, beauty is an exhortation, a stimulus, a bugle-call. It may drive them to means for pruning themselves of ugliness; it may urge them to inner harmony, to a suppression of intestinal discord.

"Beauty alone should preach penitence,"[77] says Zarathustra. And in this sentence you have the only utilitarian view of beauty that has any aristocratic value, besides that which maintains that beauty lures to Life, and to the body.

Hence, beauty need not impel all men to the river. There are some who, after contemplating it, will feel just near enough to it not to despair altogether of attaining to its level, and this thought will lend them both hope and courage.

The ruler-artist, therefore, in order that his subject-beauty may have some meaning, must be the synthesis of the past and the future of a people. Up to his waist in their spirit, he must mould or paint them the apotheosis of their type. Only thus can he hope to prevail with his subject--Man.

The German philosopher, Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, was one of the first to recognize this power of the ruler-artist, and the necessity of his being intimately associated with a particular people, although above them; and in his little book, _System der Æsthetik_, he makes some very illuminating remarks on this matter.[78]

Thus Benedetto Croce rightly argues that in order to _appreciate_ the artistic works of bygone and extinct nations, it is necessary to have a knowledge and understanding of their life and history--in other words, of their values.[79] What he does not point out, however, and what seems very important, is, that such historical research would be quite unnecessary to one who by nature was _a priori_ in sympathy with the values of an extinct nation; and also, that all the historical knowledge available could not make any one whose character was not a little Periclean or Egyptian from the start, admire, or even appreciate, either the Parthenon, or the brilliant diorite statue of King Khephrën in the Cairo Museum.

All great ruler-art, then, is, as it were, a song of praise, a magnificat, appealing only to those, and pleasing only those, who feel in sympathy with the values which it advocates. And that is why all art of any importance, and of any worth, must be based upon a certain group of values--in other words, must have a philosophy or a particular view of the world as its foundation. Otherwise it is pointless, meaningless, and divorced from life. Otherwise it is acting, sentimental nonsense, or _l'art pour l'art_.

All great ruler-art also takes Man as its content; because human values are the only values that concern it. All great ruler-art also takes beauty within a certain people as its aim; because the will-to-power is its driving instinct, and beauty, being the most difficulty thing to achieve, is the strongest test of power. Finally, all great ruler-art is optimistic; because it implies the will of the artist to prevail.

But what constitutes the form of the ruler-artist's work? In what way must he give us his content?

The ruler-artist's form is the form of the commander. It must scorn to please.[80] It must brook no disobedience and no insubordination, save among those of its beholders about whom it does not care, from whom it would fain separate itself, and among whom it is not with its peers. It must be authoritative, extremely simple, irrefutable, full of restraint, and as repetitive as a Mohammedan prayer. It must point to essentials, it must select essentials, and it must transfigure essentials. The presence of non-essentials in a work of art is sufficient to put it at once upon a very low plane. For what matters above all is that the ruler-artist should prevail in concepts, and in order to do this his work must contain the definite statement of the value he sets upon all that he most cherishes.

Hence the belief all through the history of æsthetic that high art is a certain unity in variety, a certain single idea exhaled from a more or less complex whole, or, as the Japanese say, "repetition with a modicum of variation."[81]

_Symmetry_, as denoting balance, and as a help to obtaining a complete grasp of an idea; _Sobriety_, as revealing that restraint which a position of command presupposes; _Simplicity_, as proving the power of the great mind that has overcome the chaos in itself,[82] to reflect its order and harmony upon other things,[83] and to select the most essential features from among a host of more or less essential features; _Transfiguration_, as betraying that Dionysian elation and elevation from which the artist gives of himself to reality and makes it reflect his own glory back upon him; _Repetition_, as a means of obtaining obedience; and _Variety_, as the indispensable condition of all living Art--all Art which is hortatory and which does not aim at repose alone, at sleep, and at soothing and lulling jaded and exasperated nerves,--these are the principal qualities of ruler-art, and any work which would be deficient in one of these qualities would thereby be utterly and deservedly condemned to take its place on a lower plane.

Perhaps the greatest test of all, however, in regard to the worth of an artistic production is to inquire whence it came, what was its source. Has hunger or superabundance created it?[84]

If the first, the work will make nobody richer. It will rather rob them of what they have. It is likely to be either (A) true to Nature, (B) uglier than Nature, or (C) absurdly unnatural. A is the product of the ordinary man, B is the product of the man below mediocrity, save in a certain manual dexterity, and C is the outcome of the tyrannical will of the sufferer,[85] who wishes to wreak his revenge on all that thrives, and is beautiful and happy, and which bids him weave fantastic worlds of his own, away from this one, where people of his calibre can forget their wretched ailments and evil humours, and wallow in their own feverish nightmares of overstrained, palpitating and neuropathic yearnings. A is poverty-realism or Police Art. B is pessimism and incompetent Art. C is Romanticism.

Where superabundance is active, the work is the gift and the blessing of the will to power of some higher man. It will seem as much above Nature to mediocre people as its creator is above them. But, since it will brook no contradiction, it will actually value Nature afresh, and stimulate them to share in this new valuation.

Where poverty is active, the work is an act of robbery. It is what psychologists call a reflex action resulting from a stimulus--the only kind of action that we understand nowadays: hence our belief in Determinism, Darwinism, and such explanations of Art as we find in books by Taine and other writers who share his views.

The Art which must have experience and which is not the outcome of inner riches brought to the surface by meditation--this is the art of poverty. The general modern belief in experience and in the necessity of furnishing the mind by going direct to Nature and to reality shows to what extent the Art of to-day has become reactive instead of active.

The greater part of modern realism is the outcome of this poverty. It is reactive art, resulting from reflex actions; and, as such, is an exceedingly unhealthy sign. Not only does it show that the power of resisting stimuli is waning or altogether absent; but it also denotes that that inner power which requires no stimulus to discharge itself is either lacking or exceedingly weak.

With these words upon the subject of realism, I shall now conclude this part of Lecture II.

I shall return to realism in my next lecture; but you will see that it will be of a different kind from that of which I have just spoken. It will be superior, and will be the outcome of riches rather than of poverty. Although beneath genuine Ruler-art, which transfigures reality, it will nevertheless be superior to the poverty-realism which I have just discussed; for it will be of a kind which is forced upon the powerful artist who, in the midst of a world upholding other values than his own, is obliged to bring forward his ideal with such a preponderance of characteristic features as would seem almost to represent a transcript of reality. This realism I call _militant realism_, to distinguish it from the former kind.

In discussing mediæval. Renaissance and Greek Art, in my next lecture, this distinction will, I hope, be made quite plain to you.

[73] _G. E._, p. 120

[74] _Z._, I, XXI.

[75] _The Book of Tea_, p. 152.

[76] _Ibid._ 199.

[77] _Z._, I, XXVI.

[78] _System der Æsthetik_ (1790), pp. 9, 10, 11, where, in replying to the question why the arts were not only pursued with more perfection by the ancients, but also judged with more competence by them, he says: "Their material was drawn from the heart of their nation, and from the life of their citizens, and the manner of representing it and of framing it was in keeping with the character and needs of the people.... If the Greek lent his ear to the poet, or his eye to the painter and sculptor, of his age, he was shown subjects which were familiar to his soul, intimately related to his imagination, and, as it were, bound by blood-relationship to his heart." On pp. 12, 13, he also shows that if Art is less thrilling nowadays, it is because peoples are too mixed, and a single purpose no longer characterizes their striving.

[79] _Æsthetic_ (translated by Douglas Ainslie), p. 210 et seq.

[80] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 277: "The greatness of an artist is not to be measured by the beautiful feelings which he evokes: let this belief be left to the girls. It should be measured according to the extent to which he approaches the grand style, according to the extent to which he is capable of the grand style. This style and great passion have this in common--that they scorn to please; that they forget to persuade; that they command; that they will...." See also p. 241.

[81] This was first brought to my notice by my friend, Dr. Wrench. See _The Grammar of Life_, by G. T. Wrench (Heinemann, 1908), p. 218. Although the development of this idea really belongs to a special treatise on the laws of Style in painting, it is interesting to note here that this excellent principle is quickly grasped if the powerfully alliterative phrases: "Where there's a will there's a way," or "Goodness gracious!" or "To-morrow, to-morrow, and not to-day," be spoken before certain pictures, or written beneath them. The first phrase, for instance, written beneath the "Aldobrindini Marriage," or Botticelli's "Birth of Venus," is seen immediately to be next of kin to these pictures as an art-form; and the same holds good of the second written beneath Reynolds's "John Dunning (First Lord Ashburton) and his Sister," or Manet's "Olympia."

[82] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 277.

[83] _W. P._, Vol. II. p. 288. "The most convincing artists are those who make harmony ring out of every discord, and who benefit all things by the gift of their power and their inner harmony: in every work of art they merely reveal the symbol of their inmost experiences--their creation is gratitude for their life." See also p. 307.

[84] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 280: "In regard to all æsthetic values I now avail myself of this fundamental distinction: in every individual case I ask myself has hunger or has superabundance been creative here?"

[85] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 281.