[48] I do not mean to imply here that all the sentimental gushing that is given vent to nowadays over rugged and wild scenery is the outcome only of a confusion of the artist's and layman's standpoints. The influence of the Christian and Protestant worship of pointless freedom, together with that of their contempt of the work of man, is largely active here; and the sight of unhandseled and wild shrubs, and of tangled and matted grasses, cheers the heart of the fanatical believer in the purposeless freedom and anarchy which Christianity and Protestantism have done so much to honour and extol. That the same man who honours government and an aristocratic ideal may often be found to-day dilating upon the charms of chaotic scenery, only shows how muddle-headed and confused mankind has become.
[49] The Brera at Milan.
[50] The National Gallery, London. Raphael was very much infected with the people's point of view, hence the annoying stiltedness of many of his pictures.
[51] Pinakothek, Munich.
[52] See particularly, Ruysdael's "Rocky Landscape," "Landscape with a Farm" (Wallace collection); Hobbema's "Outskirts of a Wood" and many others in the Wallace collection; and Constable's "Flatford Mill" and "The Haywain" (National Gallery).
[53] Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg.
[6. The Meaning of Beauty of Form and of Beauty of Content in Art.]
So far, then, I have arrived at this notion of beauty in Ruler-Art, namely: that it may be regarded almost universally as that order, simplicity and transfiguration which the artist mind imparts to the content of his production. This notion seems to allow of almost universal application, because, as I showed in the first part of this lecture, it involves one of the primary instincts of man—the overcoming of chaos and anarchy by adjustment, simplification and transfiguration. It is only in democratic ages, or ages of decline, when instincts become disintegrated, that beauty in Art is synonymous with a lack of simplicity, of order and of transfiguration. I have shown, however, that the second kind of beauty, or democratic beauty, is of an inferior kind to that of the first beauty, or Ruler beauty, because, while the former takes its root in the will to live, the latter arises surely and truly out of the will to power.[54] Either beauty, however, constitutes ugliness in its opponent's opinion.
But there is another aspect of Beauty in Art which has to be considered, and that is the intrinsic beauty of the content of an artistic production. You may say that, ex hypothesi, I have denied that there could be any such beauty. Not at all!