Again—when I say that æsthetic interest does not prompt to action, I am, of course, speaking of those who enjoy, not of those who are laboriously trying to enjoy, still less of those who create what is to be enjoyed. It commonly requires effort, conscious and unconscious, to be a good spectator; it always requires effort to become a good artist. Yet these are no real exceptions to the principle. Æsthetic interests, once aroused, do not prompt to action; and it is, I conceive, of their essence that they should not. The most emotional spectator does not rush to save Desdemona from Othello; and, though tragedy may (or may not) purify by “pity and terror,” the pity does not suggest a rescue, nor the terror urge to flight.
II
Now these characteristics of æsthetic emotions and beliefs raise problems of great interest. How came they to be what they are? To what causal process are they due? In the case of ethics (to anticipate a discussion that will occupy us in the next lecture) the earlier stages at least are seemingly due to selection. They lead to action, and to action which has survival value. But what survival value have æsthetic judgments and feelings at any stage of culture? It is true that actions which are sometimes represented as primitive forms of artistic creation play their part in the drama of animal courtship. Some animals dance, some sing, some croak; some flaunt colours, some exhale smells. Apes (it seems) make inarticulate noises which (according to Spencer) were the humble beginnings, not only of speech, but of music. I own that to me this sort of explanation leaves our æsthetic interests quite unexplained. Grant, for the sake of argument that, were our knowledge sufficient, we could trace a continuous history of musical emotions from the simple satisfaction excited in the female ape by the howling of the male, down to the delicate delights of the modern musician, should we be nearer an answer to the problem of æsthetic causation? I doubt it. Certainly we should not have succeeded in coupling the development of our feelings for beauty to the general process of organic evolution. Before this can be satisfactorily accomplished it must be shown, not merely that the tastes of anthropoid apes are useful to anthropoid apes, but that the tastes of men are useful to men, and in particular that the tastes of civilised men are useful to civilised men. Nor would even this be enough unless usefulness be carefully defined in terms of survival value. It must, in other words, be shown that communities rich in the genius which creates beauty and in the sensibility which enjoys it, will therefore breed more freely and struggle more successfully than their less gifted neighbours. And I am not aware that any attempt to establish such a doctrine has ever been seriously undertaken.
But, if so, our æsthetic sensibilities must be regarded (from the naturalistic standpoint) as the work of chance. They form no part of the quasi design which we attribute to selection; they are unexplained accidents of the evolutionary process. This conclusion harmonises ill with the importance which civilised man assigns to them in his scheme of values. On this point, at least, there reigns a singular unanimity. However people may differ as to what we should admire, all are agreed that we should admire something. However they may differ about the benefits to be derived from æsthetic, all are agreed that the benefits are great. The pessimist finds in art the solitary mitigation of human miseries. A certain type of agnostic treats it as an undogmatic substitute for religion. He worships beauty, but nothing else; and expects from it all the consolations of religious experience without the burdens of religious belief. Even those who would refuse to art and literature this exalted position, are prepared to praise them without stint. They regard the contemplative study of beautiful things as a most potent instrument of civilisation; in countless perorations they preach its virtues; delicacy of æsthetic discrimination they deem the surest proof of culture, and the enjoyment of æsthetic excellence its highest reward.
The case is apparently, but not really, different when we turn from beauty to the minor æsthetic interests—the popular novel, the music-hall song, the cricket-match (as spectacle), the cinematograph, and so forth. Nobody, it is true, greatly praises these things, but multitudes greatly enjoy them. The space they occupy in the life of the community has increased beyond computation. As locomotion becomes easier and leisure greater that space will increase yet more. This may be good or bad; but none will deny that it is important. What a paradox this seems! Theories of selection were devised to explain the complex structures and the marvellous adjustments of the organic world without needlessly postulating design. We should think but poorly of them if they accounted for some organs by methods quite inapplicable to others—if they showed us, for example, how the eye had developed, but appealed to some wholly different principle (say special creation) when they set to work on the ear; or taught that the nose must be regarded as an evolutionary accident not to be explained on any general principle at all. If what required explanation was of small biological importance, this last hypothesis would not seem perhaps startling. The most convinced selectionist is not obliged to suppose that selection eliminates everything which does not make for survival. Useless variations may be spared if they be harmless. Even harmful variations may be spared if they be linked to variations so advantageous that their joint effect proves beneficial on balance. But is this the case with æsthetic? Are we to treat as unconsidered trifles our powers of enjoying beauty and of creating it? Can we be content with a world-outlook which assigns to these chance products of matter and motion so vast a value measured on the scale of culture, and no value worth counting measured on the scale of race survival? If design may ever be invoked where selection fails and luck seems incredible, surely it may be invoked here.
III
These observations are applicable, more or less, to the whole body of our æsthetic interests—whether they be roused by objects we deem relatively trivial, or by objects which are admittedly rare and splendid. But while neither fit comfortably into a purely naturalistic framework, it is only the second which, in virtue of their intrinsic quality, demand a source beyond and above the world of sense perception. Here, then, we are face to face with a new question. So far we have been concerned to ask whether that which is admittedly valuable can be plausibly attributed to chance. Now we must ask whether that which is attributed to chance can thereafter retain its value. Of these questions the first is germane to the ordinary argument from design. It is the second which chiefly concerns us in these lectures.
Perhaps an affirmative answer may seem to have been already given by implication. The admission that the second problem only touches the highest values in the æsthetic scale may be thought to render the whole inquiry vain. And the admission cannot be avoided. No one supposes that when we are looking (for example) at an acrobat, it matters in the least what we think of the universe. Our beliefs and disbeliefs about the Cosmic order will not modify either in quantity or quality such satisfaction as we can derive from the contemplation of his grace and agility. Where, then, it will be asked, do we reach the point in the æsthetic scale at which values begin to require metaphysical or theological postulates? Is it the point where beauty begins? If so, who determine where this lies; and by what authority do they speak?
Evidently we are here on difficult and delicate ground. On questions of taste there is notoriously the widest divergence of opinion. Nor, if we regard our æsthetic interests simply as the chance flotsam and jetsam of the evolutionary tides, could it well be otherwise. If there be practically no “limits of deviation” imposed by selection; if, from a survival point of view, one taste be as good as another, it is not the varieties in taste which should cause surprise so much as the uniformities.
To be sure, the uniformities have often no deep æsthetic roots. They represent no strong specific likes and dislikes shared by all men at a certain stage of culture, but rather tendencies to agreement (as I have elsewhere called them), which govern our social ritual, and thereby make social life possible. We rail at “fashion,” which by an unfelt compulsion drives multitudes simultaneously to approve the same dresses, the same plays, the same pictures, the same architecture, the same music, and the same scenery. We smile at the obsequious zeal with which men strive to admire what the prophets of the moment assure them is admirable. But admitting, as I think we must, that these prophets neither possess any inherent authority, nor can point to any standard of appeal, we must also admit that if in Art there were no orthodoxies, if the heresies themselves were unorganised, if every man based his æsthetic practice on a too respectful consideration of his own moods and fancies, the world we live in would be even more uncomfortable than it is.