The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

V

It has always been recognized that there is a peculiar massiveness or depth in aesthetic satisfaction, as though it somehow carried with it the satisfaction of all interests. And this is not due merely to the fact that other interests tend to fall away or remit their claims; it is due besides to the fact that other interests may in a sense actually be fulfilled in the aesthetic interest. In other words, this interest serves a vicarious function, transmuting other interests into its own form, and then affording them a fulfilment which they are incapable of attaining when exercised in their own right.

This occurs when other interests, such as love or personal ambition, are imagined or represented, and thus made objects of agreeable apprehension. There is in this a compensation for failure, without which life would be stripped of one of its main barriers against despair. Those whom circumstance has provided no opportunity for the fulfilment of interests so ingenerate as maternal love or heroic action, may, in a way, make themselves whole {198} through the contemplation of these things; for the contemplation of them engages the same instincts, arouses the same emotions, but without requiring the existence of their objects. The prolongation of arduous and uncertain effort is compensated through the imaginative anticipation of success, or through the apprehension of some symbol of perfect fruition. It is through this happy illumination of struggle with a vision of fulfilment, that mankind is reconciled to such tasks as civilization and spiritual wholeness; tasks in which great efforts produce small results, and of which the end is not seen.

Now it remains true, of course, that such vicarious fulfilment is not real fulfilment; and to suppose it to be, is one of the most serious errors for which the aesthetic interest is responsible. The man who, with clenched hands and quickened pulse, is watching some image of himself as it triumphs over obstacles and arrives at the summit of his ambition, may and doubtless does feel like Alexander, but he nevertheless has not conquered the world; and if he thinks he has, he will probably never conquer any of it. It must be remembered that the vicarious aesthetic fulfilment of interests is the easiest fulfilment of them; and that it may, therefore, become a form of self-indulgence and a source of false complacency. A sanguine imagination is one of the {199} chief causes of worldly failure; an exaggerated interest in representations of virtue is a common cause of irresponsibility and of hypocrisy. William James, in a passage that is frequently quoted, calls attention also to the danger of acquiring a chronic emotionality.

The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterwards in some active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world—speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers—but let it not fail to take place.[14]

But not only is it possible through the exaggeration of the aesthetic interest to substitute apparent achievement for real achievement; it is possible to extract solace from the contemplation of failure itself. Is there any one who has not met the man who is actually made buoyant by his consistent misfortune? For it is flattering that an evil fate should single one out from the crowd for conspicuous attention, that all the {200} tragedy of existence should centre upon one's devoted head. And a certain interest attaches even to unredeemed misery and abject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a precipice, or the pangs of sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless, though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale, precisely the same attitude is the commonest thing in the world, and is fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic, sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as they are.

{201}