All great ruler-art also takes Man as its content; because human values are the only values that concern it. All great ruler-art also takes beauty within a certain people as its aim; because the will-to-power is its driving instinct, and beauty, being the most difficulty thing to achieve, is the strongest test of power. Finally, all great ruler-art is optimistic; because it implies the will of the artist to prevail.
But what constitutes the form of the ruler-artist's work? In what way must he give us his content?
The ruler-artist's form is the form of the commander. It must scorn to please.[77] It must brook no disobedience and no insubordination, save among those of its beholders about whom it does not care, from whom it would fain separate itself, and among whom it is not with its peers. It must be authoritative, extremely simple, irrefutable, full of restraint, and as repetitive as a Mohammedan prayer. It must point to essentials, it must select essentials, and it must transfigure essentials. The presence of non-essentials in a work of art is sufficient to put it at once upon a very low plane. For what matters above all is that the ruler-artist should prevail in concepts, and in order to do this his work must contain the definite statement of the value he sets upon all that he most cherishes.
Hence the belief all through the history of æsthetic that high art is a certain unity in variety, a certain single idea exhaled from a more or less complex whole, or, as the Japanese say, "repetition with a modicum of variation."[78]
Symmetry, as denoting balance, and as a help to obtaining a complete grasp of an idea; Sobriety, as revealing that restraint which a position of command presupposes; Simplicity, as proving the power of the great mind that has overcome the chaos in itself,[79] to reflect its order and harmony upon other things,[80] and to select the most essential features from among a host of more or less essential features; Transfiguration, as betraying that Dionysian elation and elevation from which the artist gives of himself to reality and makes it reflect his own glory back upon him; Repetition, as a means of obtaining obedience; and Variety, as the indispensable condition of all living Art—all Art which is hortatory and which does not aim at repose alone, at sleep, and at soothing and lulling jaded and exasperated nerves,—these are the principal qualities of ruler-art, and any work which would be deficient in one of these qualities would thereby be utterly and deservedly condemned to take its place on a lower plane.
Perhaps the greatest test of all, however, in regard to the worth of an artistic production is to inquire whence it came, what was its source. Has hunger or superabundance created it?[81]
If the first, the work will make nobody richer. It will rather rob them of what they have. It is likely to be either (A) true to Nature, (B) uglier than Nature, or (C) absurdly unnatural. A is the product of the ordinary man, B is the product of the man below mediocrity, save in a certain manual dexterity, and C is the outcome of the tyrannical will of the sufferer,[82] who wishes to wreak his revenge on all that thrives, and is beautiful and happy, and which bids him weave fantastic worlds of his own, away from this one, where people of his calibre can forget their wretched ailments and evil humours, and wallow in their own feverish nightmares of overstrained, palpitating and neuropathic yearnings. A is poverty-realism or Police Art. B is pessimism and incompetent Art. C is Romanticism.
Where superabundance is active, the work is the gift and the blessing of the will to power of some higher man. It will seem as much above Nature to mediocre people as its creator is above them. But, since it will brook no contradiction, it will actually value Nature afresh, and stimulate them to share in this new valuation.
Where poverty is active, the work is an act of robbery. It is what psychologists call a reflex action resulting from a stimulus—the only kind of action that we understand nowadays: hence our belief in Determinism, Darwinism, and such explanations of Art as we find in books by Taine and other writers who share his views.
The Art which must have experience and which is not the outcome of inner riches brought to the surface by meditation—this is the art of poverty. The general modern belief in experience and in the necessity of furnishing the mind by going direct to Nature and to reality shows to what extent the Art of to-day has become reactive instead of active.