However this may be, it is clear that this second portion of my argument, which is not based, like the first, on any objective survey of the part played in human affairs by general æsthetic interests, has special difficulties to surmount. For it rests on experiences of high emotion rare for all, unknown to many, roused in different men by different objects. How can any conclusions be securely based on foundations at once so slender and so shifting?
I agree that the values dealt with in this part of the argument are not values for everybody. Yet everybody, I think, would be prepared to go some way in the direction I desire. They would acknowledge that, in art, origin and value cannot be treated as independent. They would agree that those who enjoy poetry and painting must be at least dimly aware of a poet beyond the poem and a painter beyond the picture. If by some unimaginable process works of beauty could be produced by machinery, as a symmetrical colour pattern is produced by a kaleidoscope, we might think them beautiful till we knew their origin, after which we should be rather disposed to describe them as ingenious. And this is not, I think, because we are unable to estimate works of art as they are in themselves, not because we must needs buttress up our opinions by extraneous and irrelevant considerations; but rather because a work of art requires an artist, not merely in the order of natural causation, but as a matter of æsthetic necessity. It conveys a message which is valueless to the recipient, unless it be understood by the sender. It must be expressive.
Such phrases are no doubt easily misunderstood. Let me, therefore, hasten to add that by an “expressive” message I do not mean a message which can be expressed in words. A work of art can never be transferred from one medium into another, as from marble to music. Even when words are the medium employed, perfect translation is impossible. One poet may paraphrase, in a different language, the work of another; and a new work of art may thus be produced. But however closely it follows the original, it will never be the same. On the other hand, if the medium used be (for example) colour, or sound, or stone, the work of art cannot be translated into words at all. It may be described; and the description may better the original. Yet it cannot replace it. For every work of art is unique; and its meaning cannot be alternatively rendered. But are we, therefore, to conclude that it has no meaning? Because its message cannot be translated, has it therefore no message? To put these questions is to answer them.
Many people, however, who would travel with me so far would refuse to go further. They would grant that a work of art must be due to genius, and not, in the first instance, to mechanism or to chance. But whether, in the last resort, mechanism or chance has produced the genius, they would regard as, from the æsthetic point of view, quite immaterial. Music and poetry must have a personal source. But the musician and the poet may come whence they will.
And perhaps, in very many cases, this is so; but not, I think, in all, nor in the highest. If any man will test this for himself, let him recall the too rare moments when beauty gave him a delight which strained to its extremest limit his powers of feeling; when not only the small things of life, but the small things of Art—its technical dexterities, its historical associations—vanished in the splendour of an unforgettable vision; and let him ask whether the attribution of an effect like this to unthinking causes, or to an artist created and wholly controlled by unthinking causes, would not go far to impair its value.
To such an appeal it is not difficult to raise objections. It may be said, for example, that, under the stress of emotions like those I have described, no man troubles his head about problems of cosmology; thought is merged in feeling; speculation is smothered. But though this is true, it is not wholly true. As no pain, I suppose, is so intense as to exclude all reflections on its probable duration, so no rapture is so absorbing as to exclude all reflections on its probable source. I grant that at such moments we do not philosophise; we do not analyse a problem, turning it this way or that, and noting every aspect of it with a cool curiosity. Nevertheless, for those accustomed to reflect, reflection is never wholly choked by feeling. Nor can feeling, in the long run, be wholly unaffected by reflection.
Again, it may be said that such moments too seldom occur in any man’s experience to justify even the most modest generalisations—let alone generalisations that embrace the universe. But this objection seems to rest on a misapprehension. We must remember that the argument from æsthetic values is not a scientific induction or a logical inference. There is here no question of truth and falsehood, or even of good taste and bad taste. We are not striving to isolate what is essential to beauty by well-devised experiments; nor are we concerned with psycho-physical determination of the normal relation between feeling and stimulus. If it be urged that some particular example of deep æsthetic emotion quite outruns the merits of its object, so that sound canons of criticism require its value to be lowered, we need not deny it. We are not dealing with sound canons of criticism; though I may observe, in passing, that if they lower emotional values in one direction without raising them in others, good taste becomes a somewhat costly luxury. My point is different. I am not appealing to all men, but only to some men—to those and to those only who, when they explicitly face the problem, become deeply conscious of the incongruity between our feelings of beauty and a materialistic account of their origin.
The extreme individualism of this point of view may seem repulsive to many. Are the feelings (they will ask) of some transient moment to be treated as authentic guides through the mysteries of the universe, merely because they are strong enough to overwhelm our cooler judgment? And, if so, how far is this method of metaphysical investigation to be pressed? Are we, for example, to attach transcendental value to the feelings of a man in love? There is evidently a close, though doubtless not a perfect, parallel between the two cases. It is true that love is rooted in appetite, and that appetite has a survival value which I, at least, cannot find in the purely contemplative emotions. But romantic love goes far beyond race requirements. From this point of view it is as useless as æsthetic emotion itself. And, like æsthetic emotion of the profounder sort, it is rarely satisfied with the definite, the limited, and the immediate. It ever reaches out towards an unrealised infinity. It cannot rest content with the prose of mere fact. It sees visions and dreams dreams which to an unsympathetic world seem no better than amiable follies. Is it from sources like these—the illusions of love and the enthusiasms of ignorance—that we propose to supplement the world-outlook provided for us by sober sense and scientific observation?
Yet why not? Here we have values which by supposition we are reluctant to lose. Neither scientific observation nor sober sense can preserve them. It is surely permissible to ask what will. And if Naturalism be inimical to their maintenance, the fact should at least be noted.
It is true, no doubt, that these high-wrought feelings have worse enemies even than naturalism. When the impassioned lover has sunk into a good husband, and the worshipper of beauty has cooled into a judicious critic, they may look back on their early raptures with intelligent disdain. In that event there are for them no values to be maintained. They were young, they were foolish, they made a mistake, and there is no more to be said. But there is a higher wisdom. Without ignoring what experience has to teach, they may still believe that through these emotions they have obtained an authentic glimpse of a world more resplendent and not less real than that in which they tramp their daily round. And, if so, they will attribute to them a value independent of their immediate cause—a value which cannot be maintained in a merely naturalistic setting.[4]