Aphorisms.
Sentences Written by Mr. Allston on the Walls of His Studio.
1. "No genuine work of Art ever was, or ever can be, produced but for its own sake; if the painter does not conceive to please himself, he will not finish to please the world."--FUSELI.
2. If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own. This is the test of a true love.
3. Nor is this genuine love compatible with a craving for distinction; where the latter predominates, it is sure to betray itself before contemporary excellence, either by silence, or (as a bribe to the conscience) by a modicum of praise.
The enthusiasm of a mind so influenced is confined to itself.
4. Distinction is the consequence, never the object, of a great mind.
5. The love of gain never made a Painter; but it has marred many.
6. The most common disguise of Envy is in the praise of what is subordinate.
7. Selfishness in Art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at home.
8. The Devil's heartiest laugh is at a detracting witticism. Hence the phrase "devilish good" has sometimes a literal meaning.
9. The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor.
10. Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness by elevating itself into an antagonist of what is above it. He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit so much as to look down. Of such minds are mannerists in Art; in the world, tyrants of all sorts.
11. No right judgment can ever be formed on any subject having a moral or intellectual bearing without benevolence; for so strong is man's natural self-bias, that, without this restraining principle, he insensibly becomes a competitor in all such cases presented to his mind; and, when the comparison is thus made personal, unless the odds be immeasurably against him, his decision will rarely be impartial. In other words, no one can see any thing as it really is through the misty spectacles of self-love. We must wish well to another in order to do him justice. Now the virtue in this good-will is not to blind us to his faults, but to our own rival and interposing merits.
12. In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others; for injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad. Never, therefore, expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect.
13. The Phrenologists are right in placing the organ of self-love in the back of the head, it being there where a vain man carries his intellectual light; the consequence of which is, that every man he approaches is obscured by his own shadow.
14. Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back.
15. If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other! But the contest between Truth and Falsehood is now pretty well balanced. Were it not so, and had the latter the mastery, even language would soon become extinct, from its very uselessness. The present superfluity of words is the result of the warfare.
16. A witch's skiff cannot more easily sail in the teeth of the wind, than the human eye lie against fact; but the truth will oftener quiver through lips with a lie upon them.
17. An open brow with a clenched hand shows any thing but an open purpose.
18. It is a hard matter for a man to lie all over. Nature having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will sometimes act as a vane to show which way the wind blows, when every feature is set the other way; the knees smite together, and sound the alarm of fear, under a fierce countenance; and the legs shake with anger, when all above is calm.
19. Nature observes a variety even in her correspondences; insomuch that in parts which seem but repetitions there will be found a difference. For instance, in the human countenance, the two sides of which are never identical. Whenever she deviates into monotony, the deviation is always marked as an exception by some striking deficiency; as in idiots, who are the only persons that laugh equally on both sides of the mouth.
The insipidity of many of the antique Statues may be traced to the false assumption of identity in the corresponding parts. No work wrought by feeling (which, after all, is the ultimate rule of Genius) was ever marked by this monotony.
20. He is but half an orator who turns his hearers into spectators. The best gestures (quoad the speaker) are those which he cannot help. An unconscious thump of the fist or jerk of the elbow is more to the purpose, (whatever that may be,) than the most graceful cut-and-dried action. It matters not whether the orator personates a trip-hammer or a wind-mill; if his mill but move with the grist, or his hammer knead the iron beneath it, he will not fail of his effect. An impertinent gesture is more likely to knock down the orator than his opponent.
21. The only true independence is in humility; for the humble man exacts nothing, and cannot be mortified,--expects nothing, and cannot be disappointed. Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize a thousand wounds, which pride would keep for ever open. But humility is not the virtue of a fool; since it is not consequent upon any comparison between ourselves and others, but between what we are and what we ought to be,--which no man ever was.
22. The greatest of all fools is the proud fool,--who is at the mercy of every fool he meets.
23. There is an essential meanness in the wish to get the better of any one. The only competition worthy, of a wise man is with himself.
24. He that argues for victory is but a gambler in words, seeking to enrich himself by another's loss.
25. Some men make their ignorance the measure of excellence; these are, of course, very fastidious critics; for, knowing little, they can find but little to like.
26. The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his own genius.
27. Popular excellence in one age is but the mechanism of what was good in the preceding; in Art, the technic.
28. Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own. This is as true in Art as in morals.
29. A man of genius should not aim at praise, except in the form of sympathy; this assures him of his success, since it meets the feeling which possessed himself.
30. Originality in Art is the individualizing the Universal; in other words, the impregnating some general truth with the individual mind.
31. The painter who is content with the praise of the world in respect to what does not satisfy himself, is not an artist, but an artisan; for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a mechanic,--for his time, and not for his art.
32. Reputation is but a synonyme of popularity; dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of the voters. It is the creature, so to speak, of its particular age, or rather of a particular state of society; consequently, dying with that which sustained it. Hence we can scarcely go over a page of history, that we do not, as in a church-yard, tread upon some buried reputation. But fame cannot be voted down, having its immediate foundation in the essential. It is the eternal shadow of excellence, from which it can never be separated; nor is it ever made visible but in the light of an intellect kindred with that of its author. It is that light which projects the shadow which is seen of the multitude, to be wondered at and reverenced, even while so little comprehended as to be often confounded with the substance,--the substance being admitted from the shadow, as a matter of faith. It is the economy of Providence to provide such lights: like rising and setting stars, they follow each other through successive ages: and thus the monumental form of Genius stands for ever relieved against its own imperishable shadow.
33. All excellence of every kind is but variety of truth. If we wish, then, for something beyond the true, we wish for that which is false. According to this test, how little truth is there in Art! Little indeed! but how much is that little to him who feels it!
34. Fame does not depend on the will of any man, but Reputation may be given or taken away. Fame is the sympathy of kindred intellects, and sympathy is not a subject of willing; while Reputation, having its source in the popular voice, is a sentence which may either be uttered or suppressed at pleasure. Reputation, being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the envious and the ignorant; but Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of will.
35. What light is in the natural world, such is fame in the intellectual; both requiring an atmosphere in order to become perceptible. Hence the fame of Michael Angelo is, to some minds, a nonentity; even as the sun itself would be invisible in vacuo.
36. Fame has no necessary conjunction with Praise: it may exist without the breath of a word; it is a recognition of excellence, which must be felt, but need not be spoken. Even the envious must feel it,--feel it, and hate it, in silence.
37. I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for it; that is, directly. For, as fame is but the contingent of excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before its substance was obtained. Many, however, have so fancied. "I write, I paint, for fame," has often been repeated: it should have been, "I write, I paint, for reputation." All anxiety, therefore, about Fame should be placed to the account of Reputation.
38. A man may be pretty sure that he has not attained excellence, when it is not all in all to him. Nay, I may add, that, if he looks beyond it, he has not reached it. This is not the less true for being good Irish.
39. An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been reflected from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse are men to admitting the true in an unusual form; whilst any novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed. Nor is this to be wondered at; for all truth demands a response, and few people care to think, yet they must have something to supply the place of thought. Every mind would appear original, if every man had the power of projecting his own into the mind of others.
40. All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original; he can only believe it on the report of others to whom he is made known, as he is by the projecting power before spoken of.
41. There is one thing which no man, however generously disposed, can give, but which every one, however poor, is bound to pay. This is Praise. He cannot give it, because it is not his own,--since what is dependent for its very existence on something in another can never become to him a possession; nor can he justly withhold it, when the presence of merit claims it as a consequence. As praise, then, cannot be made a gift, so, neither, when not his due, can any man receive it: he may think he does, but he receives only words; for desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other. This is no fanciful statement; for, though praise may be withheld by the ignorant or envious, it cannot be but that, in the course of time, an existing merit will, on some one, produce its effects; inasmuch as the existence of any cause without its effect is an impossibility. A fearful truth lies at the bottom of this, an irreversible justice for the weal or woe of him who confirms or violates it.
[From the back of a pencil sketch.]
Let no man trust to the gentleness, the generosity, or seeming goodness of his heart, in the hope that they alone can safely bear him through the temptations of this world. This is a state of probation, and a perilous passage to the true beginning of life, where even the best natures need continually to be reminded of their weakness, and to find their only security in steadily referring all their thoughts, acts, affections, to the ultimate end of their being: yet where, imperfect as we are, there is no obstacle too mighty, no temptation too strong, to the truly humble in heart, who, distrusting themselves, seek to be sustained only by that holy Being who is life and power, and who, in his love and mercy, has promised to give to those that ask.--Such were my reflections, to which I was giving way on reading this melancholy story.
If he is satisfied with them, he may rest assured that he is neither fitted for this world nor the next. Even in this, there are wrongs and sorrows which no human remedy can reach;--no, tears cannot restore what is lost.
[Written in a book of sketches, with a pencil.]
A real debt of gratitude--that is, founded on a disinterested act of kindness--cannot be cancelled by any subsequent unkindness on the part of our benefactor. If the favor be of a pecuniary nature, we may, indeed, by returning an equal or greater sum, balance the moneyed part; but we cannot liquidate the kind motive by the setting off against it any number of unkind ones. For an after injury can no more undo a previous kindness, than we can prevent in the future what has happened in the past. So neither can a good act undo an ill one: a fearful truth! For good and evil have a moral life, which nothing in time can extinguish; the instant they exist, they start for Eternity. How, then, can a man who has once sinned, and who has not of himself cleansed his soul, be fit for heaven where no sin can enter? I seek not to enter into the mystery of the atonement, "which even the angels sought to comprehend and could not"; but I feel its truth in an unutterable conviction, and that, without it, all flesh must perish. Equally deep, too, and unalienable, is my conviction that "the fruit of sin is misery." A second birth to the soul is therefore a necessity which sin forces upon us. Ay,--but not against the desperate will that rejects it.
This conclusion was not anticipated when I wrote the first sentence of the preceding paragraph. But it does not surprise me. For it is but a recurrence of what I have repeatedly experienced; namely, that I never lighted on any truth which I inwardly felt as such, however apparently remote from our religious being, (as, for instance, in the philosophy of my art,) that, by following it out, did not find its illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible,--the only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their darkness and their terror.