This, then, is the earliest lesson that the student of art has to learn: that it exists for pleasure, but for a pleasure that may be profitable, and that stands in no sort of opposition to truth. “Science,” says Mr. Dallas, “gives us truth without reference to pleasure, but immediately and chiefly for the sake of knowledge. Art gives us truth without reference to knowledge, but immediately and mainly for the sake of pleasure.” The test of science, then, must always be an increase of knowledge, of proven and demonstrable facts; the test of art must always be an increase of pleasure, of conscious and sentient joy. “What is good only because it pleases,” says Dr. Johnson, “cannot be pronounced good until it has been found to please.”
The joy that is born of art is not always a simple or easily analyzed emotion. The pleasure we take in looking at the soft, white, dimpled Venus of the Capitol is something very different from that strange tugging at our heart-strings when we first see the sad and scornful beauty of the Venus of Milo, or the curious pity with which we watch the dejected Cupid of the Vatican hanging his lovely head. But with both the Venus of Milo and the Vatican Cupid, the sensation of pleasure they afford is greater than the sensation of pain, or pity, or regret. It triumphs wholly over our other emotions, and gains fullness from the conflict of our thoughts. We feel many things, but we feel pleasure most of all, and this is the final test; and the final victory of art. In the same manner, the mixed emotions with which we listen to music resolve themselves ultimately to pleasure in that music; and the mixed emotions with which we read poetry resolve themselves ultimately to pleasure in that poetry. If it were otherwise, we should know that the music and the poetry had failed in their crucial trial. If we did not feel more pleasure than pain in the tragedy of “Othello,” it would not be a great play. That we do feel more pleasure than pain, that our pleasure is subtly fed by our pain, proves it to be a masterpiece of art.
There is still another point to urge. While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing. The former quality is accidental, the latter essential, to its being. “Enjoyment,” says Schiller, “may be only a subordinate object in life; it is the highest in art.” We cannot say that “The Eve of St. Agnes” teaches us, directly or indirectly, anything whatever. The trembling lovers, the withered Angela, the revelers,
“The carved angels, ever eager-eyed,”
the storm without, the fragrant warmth and light within, are all equally innocent of moral emphasis. Even the Beadsman is not worked up, as he might have been, into a didactic agent. But every beauty-laden line is rich in pleasure, the whole poem is an inheritance of delight. I never read it without being reminded afresh of that remonstrance offered so gently by Keats to Shelley,—by Keats, who was content to be a poet, to Shelley, who would also be a reformer: “You will, I am sure, forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.” Load every rift of your subject with ore,—there spoke the man who claimed no more for himself than that he had loved “the principle of beauty in all things,” and to whose hushed and listening soul the cry of Shelley’s “divine discontent” rang jarringly in the stillness of the night. If the poetry of Keats, a handful of scattered jewels left us by a dying boy, is, as Matthew Arnold admits, more solid and complete than Shelley’s superb and piercing song, to what is this due, save that Keats possessed, in addition to his poetic gift, the tranquil artist soul; content, as Goethe was content, to love the principle of beauty, and to be in sympathy with the great living past which has nourished, and still nourishes, the living present. The passion for reconstructing society, and for distributing pamphlets as a first step in the reconstruction, had no part in his artistic development. The errors of his fellow-mortals touched him lightly; their superstitions did not trouble him at all; their civil rights and inherited diseases were not matters of daily thought and analysis. But what he had to give them he gave unstintedly, and we to-day are rich in the fullness of his gift. “The proper and immediate object of poetry,” says Coleridge, “is the communication of immediate pleasure;” and are our lives so joyous that this boon may go unrecognized and unregarded? Which is best for us in this chilly world,—that which pleases, but does not instruct, like “The Eve of St. Agnes,” or that which instructs, but does not please, like Dr. Ibsen’s “Ghosts”? I do not say, which is true art? because the relative positions of the two authors forbid comparison; but, judged by the needs of humanity, which is the finer gift to earth? If, with Pliny, we seek an escape from mortality in literature, which shall be our choice? If, with Dr. Johnson, we require that a book should help us either to enjoy life or to endure it, which shall we take for a friend?
“Everything that is any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself,” says Marcus Aurelius; and the pleasure we derive from a possession of beauty has characteristic completeness and vitality. This pleasure is not only, as we are so often told, a temporary escape from pain; it is not a negation, a mere cessation of suffering; it is not necessarily preceded by craving or followed by satiety; it is emphatically not a matter of prospect as Shelley would have us believe;[1] it is a matter of conscious possession. “Vivre, c’est penser et sentir son âme;” and when a happy moment, complete and rounded as a pearl, falls into the tossing ocean of life, it is never wholly lost. For our days are made up of moments and our years of days, and every swift realization of a lawful joy is a distinct and lasting gain in our onward flight to eternity.
[1] “Pain or pleasure, if subtly analyzed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect.”
It seems to me strangely cruel that this philosophy of pleasure should be so ruthlessly at variance with the ethical criticism of our day. If it has come down to us as a gracious gift from the most cheerful and not the least wholesome of heathens, it has been broadened and brightened into fresh comeliness by the spirit of Christianity, which is, above all things, a spirit of lawful and recognized joy. Nothing is more plain to us in the teaching of the early Church than that asceticism is for the chosen few, and enjoyment, diffused, genial, temperate, and pure enjoyment, is for the many. “Put on, therefore, gladness that hath always favor with God, and is acceptable unto him, and delight thyself in it; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and thinketh good thoughts, despising grief.”[2] Through all the centuries, rational Christianity has still taught us bravely to endure what we must, and gratefully to enjoy what we can. There is a very charming and sensible letter on this point, written by the Abbé Duval to Madame de Rémusat, who was disposed to reproach herself a little for her own happiness, and to think that she had no right to be so comfortable and so well content.
[2] Shepherd of Hermas.
“You say that you are happy,” writes this gentlest and wisest of confessors; “why then distress yourself? Your happiness is a proof of God’s love toward you; and if in your heart you truly love Him, can you refuse to respond to the divine benevolence?... Engrave upon your conscience this fundamental truth: that religion demands order above all things; and that, since the institutions of society have been allowed and consecrated, there is encouragement for those duties by which they are maintained.... But especially banish from your mind the error that our pains alone are acceptable to God. A general willingness to bear trial is enough. Never fear but life and time will bring it. Dispose yourself beforehand to resignation, and meanwhile thank God incessantly for the peace which pervades your lot.”