Chapter VII: The Artist and His Realm (1)

The Divine Attributes the base of all true Art.

Aristotle teaches that: 'The object of the poet is not to conceive or treat the True as it _really_ happened, but as it _should_ have happened. The essential difference between the poet and historian is not that the one speaks in verse, the other in prose, for the work of Herodotus in verse would still be a history; that is, it would still relate what had _actually_ occurred, while it is the province of a poem to detail that which _should_ have taken place.' Thus the human soul exacts in the finite creations of the poet that justice which it ever divines, but cannot always see, because the end passes beyond its present vision, in the varying dramas of human destiny written in the Book of the Infinite God.

Carefully keeping in mind that the end of such divine dramas is not _here_, we see that, in accordance with the above views of Aristotle, the _true_ is not that which _really_ occurs, but that which our feelings and intellect tell us ought to occur. The actually occurring, the _Real_, has always been confounded with the abstractly _true_, but they are very different things. Virtue, morality, such as revealed by Christianity, and confirmed by reason, are certainly _true_; but in relation to that which is, to the _real_, the _actual_, what man has ever yet succeeded in realizing the pure, high model set forth in the Gospel? In accordance with the theory that the _Actual_ is the _true_, the nature of a saintly hero, a self-abnegating martyr, would not be a _true_ nature; while the fact is, it alone is true to the purposes of its creation.

Sophocles, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Fra Angelico, etc., etc., did not mean by truth in the arts, the pure and simple expression of that which _really_ is, but the expression of that which is rarely found _in_ the actual, but is suggested by it. Aquinas makes an acute distinction between the intellect _passive_, which merely receives impressions from without, and the intellect _active_, which reasons upon and draws inferences from them. The senses can only give or know the _individual_; the active intellect alone conceives the _universal_. Our eyes perceive a triangle; but as we have this perception in common with the brutes, it cannot raise us above their level; and to take our rank as intelligences, as men, we must rise from the mere perception of the individual triangle to the general idea of triangularity. Thus it is the power of _generalizing_ which marks us as men; and the senses have in reality nothing to do with the internal operation; they but receive the impressions, and convey them to the active intellect. Thus to the impressions given by the senses of _finite_ things to the passive mind, the active intellect adds the idea of _infinity_. The eager soul, always longing for the infinite, the absolute, then seeks to invest all with that perfection which it divines in the Maker of all; the possibility of which conception of perfection is added or attached by the Creator to the Real, as a supersensuous gift to those made in His own image. Such conceptions live ever firm and fair in the charmed world of the artist, for his world is the Realm of pure Ideas.

Much may be quoted in proof of this view. Cicero says:

'When Phidias formed his Jupiter, he had no living model before his
eyes, but having conceived an idea of perfect beauty in his soul,
he labored only to imitate it, to produce it in the marble without
change.'

Raphael says:

'Having found no model sufficiently beautiful for my Galatea, I
worked from a certain Idea which I found in my own mind.'

Fra Angelico furnishes a striking example of working from images found in the soul. He was an artist of very devout character, early devoting himself and his art to God, saying: Those who work for Christ, must dwell in Christ. Always, before commencing a picture which was to be consecrated to the honor of God, he prepared himself with fervent prayer and meditation, and then began in humble trust that '_it would be put into his mind what he ought to delineate_;' he would never deviate from the first idea, for, as he said, '_that_ was the will of God.' This he said not in presumption, but in faith and simplicity of heart. So he passed his life in imaging his _own ideas_, which were sent to his meek soul by no fabled muse, but by that Spirit 'that doth prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure;' and never before or since was earthly material worked up into soul, nor earthly forms refined into spirit, as under the hands of this devout painter. He became sublime through trusting goodness and humility. It was as if Paradise had opened upon him--a Paradise of rest and joy, of purity and love, where no trouble, no guile, no change could enter; and if his celestial creations lack force, we feel that before these ethereal beings, power itself would be powerless; his angels are resistless in their soft serenity; his virgins are pure from all earthly stain; his redeemed spirits in meek rapture glide into Paradise; his martyrs and confessors are absorbed in devout ecstasy. Well has he been named IL BEATO E ANGELICO, whose life was participate with the angels even in this world. Is it not clear that Fra Angelico had found the Realm of the Artist; the fair and happy clime of the Ideal?

Our readers must not confound the ideal with the imaginary: the ideal is rather that which the real requires to invest it with that beauty which it would have possessed had the spirits of Death and sin never thrown their dark shadows over God's perfect work. Let not the poet fear the reproach that his characters are too _ideal_; if harmoniously constructed, but _true_ in the higher sense, such reproach is praise.

Man rises spontaneously from the perception of the finite beauty of creatures to the conception of the sovereign beauty of the Creator, which idea has indeed its first condition in the perception of the senses; but it passes on until it extends its sphere through all our faculties, all our moral life, until the distant vision of Absolute Beauty attracts us from the limited sphere of the senses to the realm of the ideal. Thus the artist, that he may appease the insatiate thirst for Absolute Beauty, which ever pursues him, strives to bring down upon earth the divine but veiled images, which he beholds in that fair clime.

Every work of art implies three acts of the intellect: an act, by which the artist conceives the pure idea, the soul of his creation; an act, by which he conceives or invents the form in which he is to incarnate this idea, the body of his creation; and, lastly, a conception of the relations between the pure idea and its material form, the rendering of the body a fit vehicle and indwelling-place for the soul. Three acts--but an artist of _genius_ produces the three _simultaneously_; consequently a marvellous life and unity mark all his works: an artist of mere talent must be contented simply with the production of new combinations of form, since Genius alone can create artistic soul; while the assiduous student, without any peculiar natural gift, is capable of the third act, as it is only an intellectual exercise in which the scientific principles of art are skilfully applied to given forms.

Artists are frequently considered as deficient in the faculty of Reason, whereas no one was ever a great artist without possessing it in a high degree, and mankind are rapidly becoming aware of this fact. It is true they often jump the middle terms of their syllogisms, and assume premises to which the world has not yet arrived; but time stamps their rapid deductions as invincible, for genius dwells in the REALM OF THE IDEAL: the realm, not of contingent and phenomenal actualities, but of _eternal truths_. 'For the ideal is destined to transform man and the world entire into its own image; and in this gradual and successive transformation consists the whole progressive history of humanity.'

Genius discerns the true and beautiful in itself, in the world of ideas, in God.

Talent lies on a lower level. It is the power of manifesting to men, whether by words, sounds, or plastic signs, the ideas already suggested by genius, or found by the reasoning faculties.

Genius is intuitive and creative--talent, reflective and acute.

Shakespeare was a poet of unequalled genius--Milton, of unrivalled talent.

Chopin is a composer of profound genius--Mendelssohn, of highly cultivated talent.

Madame de Stäel was a woman of genius--Miss Edgeworth, one of talent.

Elizabeth Barrett is a poet of genius--Tennyson, of talent.

Genius descends from the Idea to the Form--from the invisible to the visible: talent mounts from the visible to the invisible.

Genius holds its objects with and by the heart; talent seizes and masters them through the understanding. Genius creates body, soul, and fitness; talent combines new forms for the immortal souls already created by genius.

Taste, in its highest grade, ranks above talent, and stands next to genius; nay, it is sometimes known as _receptive_ genius. It is the faculty of recognizing the Beautiful in the world of thought, art, and nature; in words, tones, forms, and colors. Taste is a higher faculty than is generally supposed. Genius and Taste are the Eros and Anteros of art. Without his brother, the first would remain ever a child. Taste is that innate and God-given faculty which at once perceives and hails as true, ideas, which it, however, has not the power to discover for itself. It should be educated and carefully fostered; but no amount of cultivation will give it where not already in existence, for it is as truly innate as genius itself.

In its lowest form, it is the comprehension of the scientific principles of art, and the judging of artistic works in accordance with scientific rules.

What is known as tact, is a curious social development of the same faculty. Taste is the child of the mind and soul; tact, of the soul and heart. Both are incommunicable.

The word taste is frequently misapplied. Thus a man, with what is blunderingly called a classical taste, is incapable of aught but the classic; that is to say, he recognizes in a new work that which makes the charm of an old one, and pronounces it worthy of admiration. Put the right foot of an Apollo forward, instead of the left, and call it Philip of Pokanoket, and he will fall into ecstasies over a work at once so truly national and classic. He would have stood dumb and with an untouched heart, before the Apollo, fresh from the chisel of the sculptor. Such men have graduated at Vanity Fair, and are the old-clothesmen of art.

Thus the men of talent are almost invariably recognized and crowned in their own days; because they always deal with ideas in a measure already familiar to the multitude. But, alas for the sensitive child of genius! The bold explorer of untrodden paths must cut away the underbrush that others may follow him; he must himself create the taste in the masses, by which he is afterward to be judged. His bold, daring, and original conceptions serve only to dazzle, confuse, and blind the multitude; and as it requires time to understand them, to read their living characters of glowing light, the laurel wreaths of appreciation and sympathy, which should have graced his brow and cheered his heart, too often trail their deathless green in vain luxuriance round the chill marble covering the early grave of a broken heart. Ah, friends! Genius demands sympathy in its impassioned creations; loving and laboring for humanity, it exacts comprehension, at least, in return. Yet how very difficult it is for an artist to win such comprehension! And, by a strange fatality, the more original his compositions, the greater the difficulty. He must amuse the men of the senses; satisfy the precision of the men of the schools; and succeed in rendering intelligible to the uncultured masses the subtile links of ethereal connection which chain the finite, the relative of his compositions, to the Infinite, the Absolute.

For it is a pregnant fact, with regard to the masses, that only so far as they can be made to _feel_ the connection of things with the Absolute, can they be induced to appreciate them. For instance, tell them that the stars attract in the direct ratio of their masses, in inverse ratio to the squares of the distance, and they may almost fail to understand you; but tell them, in the words of the Divine Book, so marvellously adapted to their comprehension, that 'the stars declare the glory of God,' and you are at once understood. Tell them they ought to love one another, because 'they are members of the same spiritual body'--and, although, in this concise statement, you have declared to them the internal constitution of the moral world, revealed the inner meaning of the laws of order, of social harmony, of their own destiny, and of the progress of the race--you may utterly fail in awakening their interest. But show them a Being who lived for this truth, whose life was one of sacrifice and abnegation, who died for its manifestation--they are immediately touched, interested, because you have left the unsympathetic region of abstract formulas; you have given law a visible, palpitating, feeling, suffering, and rejoicing Body--you awaken their love, their gratitude--they adore their godlike Brother, and now _feel_ themselves members of the one spiritual body.

It is this very possibility, on a lower plane, of thus clothing his thoughts with a visible body, which gives the artist an advantage over the man of science, who presents the formula of the _law_ with the aid of the contingent finite idea, but without connecting it with its First Cause. Confining itself to the limits of the thing examined, science tries to explain the finite rationale of its being; while art gives its formula by the aid of a material sign, a form or body, which contains or suggests both limits of its double existence, viz.: the finite and the infinite. For the true artist always connects the relative with the Absolute, the second cause with the First; in the finite he seeks the Infinite--therefore he finds mystic and hidden truths in essential harmony with the soul of man. He is always returning to unity. The man of science, on the contrary, always beginning with the variable and contingent facts of this world, is often lost in the wildering whirl of the ever-moving and unceasing variety around him, finding it hard to link his widely severed facts with the Supreme Unity, which gives to all its reason for being, its true worth. Variety and Unity--the created and the Creator!

It is almost universally believed that there is more truth in science than in poetry--a vulgar error refuted both by reason and common sense. Poetry, being the expression of the necessary with the Absolute, must, in consequence, be nearer truth than science, which has, for the most part, its starting point in contingent, variable, and fugitive facts, and either succeeds in seizing in an uncertain manner or fails to seize at all the one Idea imbosomed in such a multitudinous array of facts. The whole creation is but the visible expression of the laws of our unseen God: the man of science mounts from the visible fact to the unseen Idea, while the poet descends from the idea to the fact, thus humbly imitating the work of creation.

It was man who introduced disorder into the finite: regenerated through the incarnation of the Divine, he must labor with all his powers to restore it to its pristine order. He must remodel the physical world by his industry, and task his intellect in the paths of science, that the truths of nature may be developed, that the well-being of his body, his material nature may be properly cared for: by his courage and endurance he must alleviate all wrongs, and set free the oppressed; he must elevate his soul and ennoble his heart by a grateful attention to his religious duties; he must increase and multiply his happy and helpful relations with his brother men by a faithful and devout culture of the fine arts.

The Beautiful does not address itself principally _to_ the senses; but, by its exhibition of eternal laws, _through_ them to the soul, for the _manifestation of the Divine attributes is the mystic Heart of all true Beauty_.'

To give an example of the different appeals made by science and by art, let us open alternately the pages of the poet and savant, let us take some familiar thing, for instance, a common flower, and see what they will tell us of its character, relations, and worth. The botanist notes the distinctions of the flower, that his herbarium may be increased--the poet, that he may make them vehicles of expression, of emotion. The savant counts the stamens, numbers the pistils, delineates the leaves, marks the manner of growth, classifies, affixes a name, and is satisfied;--the poet studies the whole character of the plant, considering each of its attributes as a vehicle of expression, an ethical lesson; he notes its color, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose, remarks the feebleness or vigor, the serenity or tremulousness of its hues, observes its local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, associating it with the features of the situations it inhabits, and the ministering agencies necessary to its support. It becomes to him a _living_ creature, with histories written on its leaves, and passion breathing in its tremulous stems. He associates and identifies it with the history and emotions of humanity. Feeling that even these fragile flowers are symbolic of a moral world, he crowns the bride with white roses, orange buds, or snowy myrtle wreaths, to typify that innocence and chastity are essential to a love that is to last as long as life endures. He wreathes the redeemed with undying amaranth, unfading palms, to symbolize that their meek triumph is for eternity; while he places in the hands of the angels the sculptured chalice of the snowy lily, with its breath of incense and stamens of molten gold, as an imperfect type of the perfect purity, sweet peace, and glorious golden splendor of the Heavenly City.

The pages of the poets are full of beautiful lessons and tender illustrations drawn from the fragile flowers. We cite Lowell's lines to one of our most common flowers:

TO THE DANDELION.

Dear common flower that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth--thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;
'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white Lily's breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,--
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,--
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind,--of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap,--and of a sky above
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the Robin's song
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears,
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem
When thou, with all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

Wordsworth's 'Daisy' is very beautiful, and full of moral lessons:

In youth, from rock to rock I went,
From hill to hill, in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,
Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,--
My thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly nature's love partake
Of thee, sweet Daisy!

When winter decks his few gray hairs,
Thee in the scanty wreath he wears;
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,
That she may sun thee;
Whole summer fields are thine by right;
And Autumn, melancholy wight!
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greet'st the traveller in the lane;
If welcome once, thou count'st it gain;
Thou art not daunted,
Nor car'st if thou be set at nought:
And oft alone in nooks remote
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.

Be violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;
Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
The Poet's darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie
Near the green holly,
And wearily at length should fare;
He needs but look about, and there
Thou art: a friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy.

A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;
Some steady love, some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right,
Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.

Sweet flower! for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet, silent creature!
That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou wert wont, repair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature!

With still deeper poetic feeling has that untutored bard of nature, poor Burns, written of this little flower:

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,

_On turning one down with the plough, in April, 1786._

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem;
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem!

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie Lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
Wi' speckl'd breast,
When upward springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm
Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield
But thou, beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble field,
Unseen, alane!

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head,
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless Maid,
Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On life's rough ocean; luckless starr'd,
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven
To mis'ry's brink,
Till, wrench'd of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruin'd, sink!

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date:
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom!

With our hearts full of love and tender sympathy with the author of this exquisite poem, let us now look among the botanists for a description of the Daisy. We will find: 'Perenuius (Daisy, E.W. & P. 21), leaves obovate, crenate; scape naked, 1 flowered; or, Leucanthemum (Ox-eyed Daisy), leaves clasping, lanceolate, serrate, cut-toothed at the base; stem erect, branching.' (See Eaton's Botany.)

All honor to the savant! Untiring in his investigations, ardent in his researches, the men of the senses are scarcely worthy to untie the latchet of his shoe, but he is slow in acknowledging the _science of art_, and apt to look down upon the artist from his throne of power! Because the artist deals with a different order of truths, unseen and belonging principally to the world of feeling, the savant rarely does justice to the intense study requisite for the mastery of the mere form of art; the long, unrequited, and patient toil requisite for its practice, or the soaring and loving genius required to fill the form when mastered with glowing life. All honor to the savant! but let him not fail to acknowledge the artist-brother at his side, who labors on for humanity with no hope of learned professorships to crown his career, nor venerable diplomas to assure him of social honor and position. Let him not be regarded as an idler by the wayside, nor let 'La Bohème' be any longer considered as his especial type and insignia! The useful and the beautiful should stand banded in the closest fellowship, since Truth must be the soul of both! Honor then the pure artist, while he still lives, nor keep the laurel only for his tomb!

In order to examine scientifically, the mind is generally forced to consider its object as deprived of life; indeed, the functions of living creatures cannot be fully analyzed without being first deprived of life. Science gives us its subject with the most rigorous exactitude, with the most scrupulous fidelity; but, alas! often without that magical kindler of love and sympathy, life. Art gives us its subject with vivid coloring, motion, palpitating life--often, indeed, by associative moral symbolism adding a still higher life to simple being, filling it, as in Burns's lines to the Daisy, with a purer flame.

Science daguerreotypes, art paints its objects. Science is necessarily abstract, discrete; art necessarily concrete. So true is this, that when art begins to decline, it manifests a tendency to pass from the concrete to the discrete, abstract; it becomes self-conscious, reflective, scientific. Body, form, is mistaken for soul, spirit. A discrete idea fails to move us, because it gives us only _successively_ the relations subsisting between it and the First Cause, as its facts must be isolated, its elements decomposed, and presented to us in an inverse order to that in which they reveal themselves to the mind in the spontaneous and natural use of its powers. Science never appeals to our emotional faculties spontaneously; when it does speak to the heart, it is because the mind, linking together the successive ideas given by science, at last seizes upon the UNITY of the whole, supplying by its own conceptions the voids of science. When the savant possesses the creative power in a high degree, as did Kepler, he becomes prophet and artist. The concrete ideas of art appeal immediately to our feelings; emotions excited by them are spontaneous, because they aim at presenting their objects in all the splendor of their _living_ light. Only life produces life; all our emotions and sympathies pertain to the suffering, the acting, the living--and thus an artistic conception appeals to our entire being. What psychological analysis of youthful and feminine loveliness could move us as a Juliet?

Analysis and reflection suppose the suspension of spontaneity, that is, of the free activity of the soul. Spontaneity and reflection are the two modes in which the spirit manifests its activity. Spontaneity is the living power which it possesses of acting without premeditation, without contingent ideas, of being influenced or determined by some power from without, the action thus produced blending the two primary elements of feeling and thought. This is the distinctive mode of woman's being. Reflection is that operation of the mind by which it turns its gaze in upon itself, and considers its own operations; it compares, analyzes, and constructs logical processes of thought. This is as natural to man, as spontaneity to woman. Now both of these modes are essentially necessary to the well-being of the individual, the one is the complement of the other; the cultivation of the one should never be sacrificed to that of the other. Teach woman to reason; develop spontaneity in man. But as the whole course of our education is solely addressed to the reflective faculties, intended chiefly for their culture, how is spontaneity to be developed? Certainly not through abstract science; for it, with its formulas, occupied only with contingent and relative ideas, addressing itself solely to the faculties concerned with the elaboration of the relative, that is, to the reflective faculties--how can it avail for the cultivation of spontaneity? It can be cultivated only through the due direction of the emotional nature; but how is that to be approached? In the first place through the joys and sorrows, the events of daily life; a training of such importance that the Great Creator, for the most part, retains it in His own hands: humanly speaking, only through the arts, which contain, at the same time, the scientific form of the finite, and the blissful intuition of the Infinite. As wisdom and love mark the works of the Creator, so thought and feeling meet in the creations of the artist, in the arts--but thought alone is concerned with the formulas of science. Now, if spontaneity be more conducive to man's happiness than reflection, then poetry, literature, and the arts are of more importance to him than abstract science. If, in appealing to spontaneous emotions, they give the legitimate influence to the heart which it should possess, because under their influence thought and feeling move in the proper _unity_ of their divinely linked being, then must pure, creative, loving, and devout art at last take its rank, when spontaneity shall be regarded as the generatrix of reflection, above the cold and haughty pile reared by the reflective faculties alone, abstract science.

The aspirations of man constantly sigh for the limitless; his soul contains depths which his reason cannot fathom. How rapidly his surging ideas come and go! What flashes of supernatural light--what fearful obscurity! Heaven and Hell war in his soul! Strange visions traverse his intellect, throwing their lurid light into the vague depths of his heart. His power to love and feel seems boundless--his power to know almost at zero. What can he predicate even of himself, with his boundless desires for he knows not what--his fleeting emotions and insatiable wishes! Ah! if the language of poetry, of music, of the arts, came not to gift these passing images with external life, to fix them in the wildered consciousness, they would surge away almost unmarked, like lovely dreams, scarcely leaving their dim traces in the memory. For, with the generality of common minds, the actual is death to the ideal! But art speaks; spontaneity is justified; our inner being, so vague before, stands revealed before us; the beautiful must be the true, the chaos of the moral world is dispelled; we were created to _enjoy_ the attributes of God, which, finitely manifested, are Truth and Beauty; and His light moves over the perturbed chaos of our dim being! What can abstract science, with its cold and finite language, do for a soul athirst for an infinite happiness? Nothing, unless its first postulate be God! Young people, generally, and women, in whom the love of Beauty is strongly developed, have almost a repulsion to the study of science. Wherefore? Because it often seems to exile God from His own creation. Let Him desert Paradise, and it becomes at once a desert. The Infinite is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley! Besides, the reflective reasoning faculties awaken late with those in whom the intuitive faculties and sensibilities attain an early development. Let woman not despair. What use will there be for the reflective reason, when 'we shall know even as we are known,' and the vision in God shall make the spontaneous bliss of immortality?

The habit of only seeing, only studying, only analyzing the finite, is very apt to inspire the savant with a peculiar distrust of all spontaneous emotion. Ceasing to open his heart to that light from the Absolute, which ought to quicken it into bloom, it learns to dwell only in the sterile world of abstract formulas. If he could find algebraic signs for its expression, he would willingly believe in the immortality of the soul: the characters which he can never learn to comprehend, are precisely those in which dwell the intuitions of the infinite. He piques himself upon the precision of his language, not perceiving it has gained this boasted prim exactitude at the expense of breadth and depth. All honor to the savant! but let him keep the lamp of spontaneity ever burning in his soul. By its light the savage and the woman divine God; without it, he may weigh creation--and 'find Him not!'

Nothing can be more superficial than the intellects of men given over to formulas. They always imagine they can explore the depths of truth, if they can succeed in detecting an inch of its surface. When they arrive at the term of their own ideas, they believe they have exhausted the absolute. They frequently want feeling, because they have, in some way, destroyed their own spontaneity--that inexhaustible source of living and original thought, individualized and yet universal, of ever-thronging and vivid emotions.

The most spontaneous writer of the present day is a woman; fresh, rugged, rich, and natural, as the wayside gold of the Dandelion above described by Lowell--hence her sudden and great popularity with the people. She feels strongly, and thinks justly, and fears not to say what the great God gives her. May she continue to pour her 'wayside gold' through the literary waves of the 'Atlantic'--and still keep the molten treasure bright and burnished for the service of our altar. Let her not fly too near the candles of the clergy, and thus sear her Psyche wings. Need I name Gail Hamilton? Pardon the digression, courteous reader, and let a woman greet a gifted sister as she passes on.

Let me not be misunderstood in my estimate of the spontaneous and reflective faculties: they must _combine_ in any man _truly great_. If I have dwelt on spontaneity, it is because it has not been sufficiently prized or cultivated. The savant must have the faculties of the artist, as had Kepler; the artist those of the savant, as had Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Study, reflective power, logical ability, erudition, are _absolutely_ necessary; but one of their principal functions is to be able to analyze aright the products of spontaneity; to give the soul the consciousness and comprehension of the innumerable phenomena which arise in it, in its varied relations with the world of ideas. The man who is at the same time _spontaneous_ and _reflective_, is alone _complete_, be he artist or savant; he lives, yet is able to analyze life. Of such mental character are indeed all men of true genius, whether mechanicians, architects, philosophers, savants, or artists.

The truths surging dimly through the universal consciousness, find interpreters in the men of genius; through them the moral and religious ideas of an epoch take form, and crystallize themselves in poetry and the arts--as the laws of the divine geometry are realized in the crystallizations of minerals. Poetry and the arts may be regarded as the _sum_ of the absolute truths to the conception of which the masses have risen at any given period in the life of a people.

Lamartine says:

'If humanity were forced to lose entirely one of the two orders of
truth--either all the mathematical or all the moral truths--it
should not hesitate to sacrifice the mathematical, for though it is
true if these were lost the world would suffer immense detriment,
yet if we should lose a single one of the moral truths, where would
man himself be? Humanity would be decomposed and perish!'

It cannot be denied that art has an incontestable superiority over science in appealing to _all_, in addressing the masses in the language they most readily understand, the language of feeling, imagination, and enthusiasm. It is not intended only for men of culture, of leisure; all classes are to be benefited by its exalting influence. Men whose lives are almost entirely absorbed by occupations necessary for the comfort of their families, can scarcely be contented with the monotonous and wearisome spectacle of actual every-day life. Their cares are very exhausting, agitating the heart and mind with harassing emotions; while the immortal soul thirsts for eternal happiness. Can it be doubted that such dim, vague, unsatisfied longings are the source of much immorality? Mechanical operations, business speculations, commercial transactions, important as they may appear to the utilitarian, are far from responding to the requirements of the intellect, the imperious exactions of the heart. Such men pine unconsciously for a draught of higher life, they grow weary of existence. Literature and the arts may come to their aid, creating for them an ideal world in the midst of the actual, in the bosom of which they may find other emotions, interests, and images. They may open, even in the desert of the most conventional life, an unfailing spring of ideas and emotions, at which the poor world-wearied spirits may slake their mental and moral thirst. The wonders of commercial industry cannot quite chain the minds of men to the material world--it is certain that the thirst for the ideal ever increases in exact proportion with the development of the race. The true and high task of the artist, the poet, is to divine these wants of humanity, to cultivate these inchoate aspirations for the infinite, to hold its nectar to the toil-worn, weary lips, to soothe and elevate the restless spirits, to cultivate, in accordance with the essence of Christianity, this excess of moral and intellectual being, which the occupations of this weary earth-life cannot exhaust.

Besides, is it not true that the very character natural to the artist is peculiarly fitted to exert a beneficial influence on a material and commercial society? The pursuits of commerce are very apt to engender a spirit of utter indifference to everything except material well-being--a spirit of competition and mutual distrust most injurious to the happiness of society; but the artist is proverbially careless of mere pecuniary gain, and is always full of trust in his fellow men. In the various phases of excitement which are constantly agitating society, he looks only for the manifestation of noble passions and great thoughts. In the base smiles wreathing so many false lips, he sees but the natural expression of kindness; when lips vow fidelity, he dreams of an affection based upon esteem, not upon a passing instinct, a sordid or sensual interest--he believes in a union of hearts. Breathing everywhere around him the high enthusiasm of his own truthful and loving soul, he knows nothing of those perfidious jealousies and bitter enmities which creep and twist in the shade, always hiding under some fair mask; of those coarse intellects opposed to every noble impulse, or of that proud and obstinate egotism which repels every generous emotion of the heart, because it knows that _feeling_ creates an _equality_ which is wounding to its haughty estimation of its own supposed merit.

It is certain that the soul was not created for the accumulation of money, but to enjoy God. It is a free and living power, whose true condition upon earth is the voluntary fulfilment of duty. It was made for this by the God of love. Duty, love to God and man, is the Ideal of human life; and as art and poetry should be the expression of the highest and most universal ideas of the human race, duty should not only be the Pole star of the artist's own life, but its chastening purity should preside over all his conceptions. A profane or unchaste work of art is a sacrilege against the most High; an insult to those divine attributes in whose image that artist himself was made, and which he must constantly struggle to suggest or typify, that the work of his hand prove not a golden calf, an offence both to God and man. The moral ideal always advances as we approach it. 'Be ye perfect as I am perfect,' is the precept of the Master. This is the justification of the poet when he portrays men in advance of the common level of life. The _moral_ Beautiful is the realization of _Duty_, which the poet should picture in its most sublime form. He may and should sing of the passions, but _Duty is the eternal pole star of the soul_! The susceptible heart of the artist must respect the majesty of virtue. Unless his escutcheon glitter with the brilliancy of purity, he is not worthy to be one of the Illustrious Band whose high mission upon earth (with lowly reverence be it said) is the manifestation of the Divine Attributes. O Holy Banner, borne through the streets of the Heavenly City by saints and angels, will the artist suffer thy snowy folds to be dragged through the mire of crime? Shame to him when he dallies in the Circean Hall of the senses! Infamy when he wallows in the sty of sensuality!

The effort to apprehend and reproduce the Supernal Loveliness on the part of souls fittingly constituted so to do, has given to our race all the marvels, the softening and elevating influences of the Ideal Realm. The purest, the most exciting, the most intense pleasure is to be found in the _pure_ contemplation of Beauty. We may indulge in it without fear--no Hock and soda are required after its safe excitements! In this contemplation alone do we find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, _that excitement of the soul_, which we recognize as always dependent upon our introduction into the Realm of the Ideal. This excitement of the _soul_ is easily distinguished from the excitement of the _mind_ consequent upon the perception of logical truths, the satisfaction of the reason; or from passion, the excitement of the _heart_. The excitement of the _soul_ is strictly and simply the temporary satisfaction of the human aspiration for the Supernal Beauty; and is quite independent of the search for finite truths for the gratification of the _intellect_; or of that of passion, which is the intoxication of the _heart_. For in regard to passion of the heart, its home lies too near the senses to be entirely safe, and its tendency may be to degrade;--while there may be high and useful truths which do not move the _soul_ in the least.

The arts, then, always occupied with the reproduction of Beauty, gain their power over the soul of man by reminding him of the Divine Attributes. His thirst for the beautiful belongs to his immortality, for it never rests in the appreciation of mere finite beauty, but struggles wildly to obtain the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of time, to attain a portion of that loveliness whose elements pertain to Eternity alone; and thus, when by poetry or music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we are not moved through any excess of pleasure, but through an impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp _now, wholly, here on earth_, those divine and rapturous joys of which, through the poem or through the music, we obtain but brief and indeterminate glimpses:

'Tears, idle tears, we know not whence they're flowing,
Tears from the depths of some _divine despair_.'

Tears of the created, the finite, for the Creator, the Infinite!

Every phenomenon of the material world is not a sign of the divine thought, when considered apart from its relations with other things, as every isolated word in a language is not, in itself, a sign of our thought. There is something in the nature of things which constitutes the visible sign the symbol of the Invisible. To reveal or suggest the Absolute, it is not sufficient for the artist to combine fortuitously mere natural phenomena; he must be able to select those in which God has incarnated His Idea. Where is he to find a guide through this labyrinth of sounds, forms, tones, and colors?

He must strive to realize the ideas given him by the Creator; he must surround us here with the memories of our lost Paradise; he must repeat to us the mysterious words and tones which God confides to his heart in his lonely walks to the holy temple, in his solitary musings in the dim forests, or in his prayerful hours under the starlit heavens of the solemn midnight.

'With whose beauty (of created things) if they being delighted took
them to be gods, let them know how much the Lord of them is more
beautiful than they: _for the first Author of Beauty made all those
things_.'--_Book of Wisdom._

'And they shall strengthen the state of the world; and _their
prayer shall be in the work of their craft_, applying their soul,
and searching in the law of the Most High.'--_Ecclesiasticus._

Here, then, is the secret--gratitude and love are to be the teachers of the artist. Naught save love will enable him to read the wondrous runes of God's creation; nothing but sympathy can catch the strange tones of mythic music; there is nothing pure, which can be painted, save by the pure in heart. The foul or blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies; it will see Beelzebub in the casting out of devils; it will find its God of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment; in faith and zeal toward God it will not believe; charity it will regard as lust; compassion as pride; every virtue it will misinterpret, every faithfulness malign. But the mind of the devout artist will find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of dens and caves; it will believe in its being, often where it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; it will lie lovingly over all the foul and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, yet catching light from heaven for them to make them fair--and that must be a steep and unkindly crag, indeed, which it cannot cover.

The artist must direct his eyes to the spheres of Sovereign Beauty; he must lend his ears to the harmonies of the Eternal World, that he may be able to decipher the symbolic signs which manifest the Being of beings, and recognize the voices which murmur His Name; for in humble reverence, yet joyful gratitude, it may be said that God Himself is the First, True, and Last Master of the Artist.

Poetry and the arts have an end, ordained by Providence, with respect to the extension of _social_ intercourse; a sacred duty to fulfil to humanity at large. The signs of the times are startling; religions and governments seem driven by a whirlwind, and it is of vital importance that everything should be cultivated which has any tendency to bring men together, to link multiform variety to unity; the national variety to its distinctive unity; the variety of these distinctive unities, these national governments of all races and peoples, to one great Unity of government, freedom, development, justice, and love. There seems to be but little doubt that our own country is destined to become the _central heart_ of this marvellous _unity_. Is not the very war, now raging over her fair fields, a war for Union? A false element allowed to exist in our code of universal freedom, we mean slavery, like all Satanic elements, has struggled to bring division, faction, disintegration, death, in its train. It has convulsed, but awakened our country. Its reign is almost over; its powers to dissever and destroy are now being rapidly eliminated from a Constitution whose basic meaning is justice, equality, and love. The battle is waging in this vast area of freedom, not for spoil, dominion, vengeance, or ambition, but simply for _Union_ even with our enemies! Liberty, union, life, are parts and portions of God's own law; slavery, dismemberment, death, belong of old to Lucifer. Where God and Demon combat, can the strife be doubtful?

We suffer that we may be purified; but a Union broader, juster, and more beneficent than any the world has yet seen, is to bud, bourgeon, and bloom from this bloody contest. The rose of love is yet to grow upon this crimson soil, and brother yet to stand with brother to insure the union of the world. The glory of our present struggle for the happiness of humanity, will yet be hailed by every living soul!

This is the unity sung by prophets, felt by poets, and foreshadowed in the writings of statesmen, historians, and metaphysicians. Industry, politics, commerce, science, and the arts, are the means which God has placed at man's disposal to aid him in the accomplishment of this mighty work. Man is _one_ in the fall of Adam; _one_ in the redemption of Christ. Individuality and solidarity are but man's variety and unity.

It is certain, however, that a mere combination of commercial interests does but little for the heart; science, with its exact formulas, is almost equally powerless; they form together but the bony skeleton of a lifeless union; poetry and the arts must clothe it with the soft and clinging flesh, quicken it with the throbbing heart, and warm it with the loving soul of an all-embracing humanity; and it is, to say the least, very remarkable how exactly this important task is in keeping with the nature of the arts, because they alone express the _feelings_, the _distinctive individualities_ of men and nations, while the sciences reveal only the 'impersonal' of the intellect. That a man may demonstrate mathematical problems tells us nothing of his heart; if he paint a single violet rightly, it tells of truth, sympathy, and love. Men never leave in their scientific researches the traces of the different phases of the soul, the _imprint_ of their own _personality_; the sciences have everywhere the same character, because they contain discrete and abstract ideas, necessarily the same in all minds.

In the creations of art, on the contrary, _feeling_, the spirit of life, is added to the pure idea, and this new element of _individual character_ introduced into the thought is, in its infinite subtlety, sufficient to produce the immense variety which exists in the poetic and artistic creations of different men, of different ages, and of different nations. And the reason of this is very simple; it is because the heart is the seat of _distinctive personality_. We never _love_ men for what they _know_; we love them for what they feel and _are_. It is consequently _feeling_ which is the principle of _union_ among men.