5. The Confusion of the Two Points of View.
It is obvious that if both pleasures are to remain pure and undefiled— if the artist is to attain to his zenith in happiness, and the layman to his also—their particular points of view must not be merged, dulled, or blunted by excessive spiritual intercourse.[46] For a very large amount of the disorder in the arts of the present can easily be traced to a confusion of the two points of view.
In an ideal society, the artist's standpoint would be esoteric, and the layman's exoteric.
Nowadays, of course, owing to the process of universal levelling which has been carried so far that it is invading even the department of sex, it is hard to find such distinctions as the artist's and the layman's standpoint in art sharply and definitely juxtaposed. And this fact accounts for a good deal of the decrease in æsthetic pleasure, which is so characteristic of the age. In fact, it accounts for the decrease of pleasure in general, for only where there are sharp differences can there be any great pleasure. Pessimism and melancholia can arise only in inartistic ages, when a process of levelling has merged all the joys of particular standpoints into one.
Let me give you a simple example, drawn from modern life and the pictorial arts, in order to show you to what extent the standpoint of the people or of the layman has become corrupted by the standpoint of the artist, and vice-versâ.
Strictly speaking, artists in search of scope for their powers should prefer Hampstead Heath or the Forest of Fontainebleau[47] to the carefully laid-out gardens of our parks and of Versailles. Conversely, if their taste were still uncorrupted, the public ought to prefer the carefully arranged gardens of our parks and of Versailles to Hampstead Heath or the Forest of Fontainebleau.
Some of the public, of course, still do hold the proper views on these points, but their number is rapidly diminishing, and most of them assume the airs of artists now, and speak with sentimental enthusiasm about the beautiful ruggedness of craggy rocks, the glorious beauty of uncultivated Nature, and the splendour of wild scenery.[48]