This may seem a doctrine too mystical to suit the general tenor of these lectures. Let me, therefore, hasten to add that our ordinary and repeatable experiences of beauty seem to point in the same direction as these rarer and more intense emotions. It is, of course, true that even about these we cannot generalise as we may (for example) about the external world. We cannot, I mean, assume that there is a great body of æsthetic experience which all normal persons possess in common. There is always something about our feeling for beautiful things which can neither be described nor communicated, which is unshared and unshareable. Many normal persons have no such feelings, or none worth talking about. Their æsthetic interests may be great, but they lie at a lower level of intensity. They do not really care for beauty. Again, there are many who do care, and care greatly, who would yet utterly repudiate the doctrine that the highest æsthetic values were in any sense dependent on a spiritual view of the universe. The fact that so much of the greatest art has been produced in the service of religion they would not regard as relevant. They would remind us that one great poet at least has been a passionate materialist; that many have been pessimists; that many have been atheists; that many have been in violent revolt against the religion of their age and country. Of these we cannot say that their art suffered from their opinions, for we cannot imagine what their art would have been like had their opinions been different. Neither can we say that the readers who shared their opinions, became, thereby, less qualified to enjoy their art. Such a paradox would be too violent. How, then (the objectors may ask), are facts like these to be harmonised with the views I am recommending?
Probably they cannot be harmonised. We are confronted with a difference of temperament which must be accepted as final. Yet the contradiction may often be less than at first appears. In the case which I brought forward just now, strong æsthetic emotion was assumed to carry with it, both at the crisis of immediate experience and yet more in periods of reflective retrospect, a demand for some cause emotionally adequate to its effect. In other words, it was assumed that such an experience suggested the question—whence comes it? of matter? or of spirit? and required the answer—if it be not born of spirit it is little, or it is naught.
But in many cases this answer is not given because the question is not asked; or, if it be asked, is misunderstood. And there are many reasons why it should not be asked; and many why it should be misunderstood.
For there are two things which must, in this connection, be remembered. The first is that materialism has never been the prevailing creed among lovers of beauty. The second is that though (as I contend) a deep-lying incongruity infects theories which trace the ultimate genesis of beauty exclusively to causes which neither think, nor feel, nor will, such theories involve no contradiction, nor can those who hold them be taxed with inconsistency. There is, therefore, little in the ordinary routine of artistic criticism which raises the point which we are now discussing. A critic examining some artistic whole—a picture, a poem, a symphony—is much occupied in separating out the elements which contribute to the total effect, and in observing their character, value, and mutual relations. But it is only when we cease to analyse, when we contemplate, directly or in retrospect, the whole as a whole, that the problem of origin arises; and even then it need never become explicit. It may remain in the shape of an unsatisfied longing for a spiritual reality beyond the sensuous impression, or of a vaguely felt assurance that the spiritual reality is there. And in neither case has it developed into a question definitely presented—and pressing for a definite reply.
While, then, I am quite ready to believe that there are many persons whose enjoyment of beauty is quite independent of their world outlook, I am also convinced that there are some who count themselves among the number only because they have never put the matter to the proof. It may be that they have given but little thought to questions of theology or metaphysics. It may be that they are pantheists after the manner of Shelley, or pessimists after the manner of Schopenhauer. Perhaps, again, they hold one or other of the theosophies which pass current in the West as the esoteric wisdom of the East. In any case, they are averse from orthodoxy, or what they regard as such. A lover of the beautiful belonging to any type like these, if asked whether his estimate of æsthetic values depended on his creed, might easily miss the point of the inquiry, and his negative reply would be worthless. Let the question, therefore, be put in different terms. Let him be asked whether beauty would not lose value for him if his world-outlook required him to regard it as a purposeless accident; whether the æsthetic delights which he deems most exquisite would not be somewhat dimmed if reflection showed them to be as vain, as transitory, though not so useful, as the least considered pleasures of sense. If he replies in the negative, there is no more to be said. This lecture is not addressed to him. But I believe there are many to whom such an answer would be profoundly unsatisfying; and they, at least, can hardly deny that æsthetic values are in part dependent upon a spiritual conception of the world we live in.
IV
So far I have been considering art and the beauty expressed by art. But there are two kinds of æsthetic interest, which, though not artistic in the ordinary sense of the word, are so important that something must be said about them before this lecture closes.
The first of these is natural beauty. Hegel, if I rightly understand him, altogether excluded this from the sphere of æsthetic. For him the point of importance was Spirit—the Idea—expressing itself in art; and since nature is not spirit, nor natural beauty art, the exclusion was logical. For me, on the other hand, the main thing is feeling roused by contemplation; and particularly feeling at its highest level of quality and intensity. Natural beauty, therefore, cannot be ignored; since no feelings of contemplation possess higher quality, or greater intensity, than those which natural beauty can arouse.
Evidently, however, there is, even from my point of view, a great difference between beauty in art and beauty in nature. For, in the case of nature, there is no artist; while, as I observed just now, “a work of art requires an artist, not merely in the order of natural causation, but in the order of æsthetic necessity. It conveys a message which is valueless to the recipient unless it be understood by the sender. It must be significant.”
Are we, then, to lay down one rule for artistic beauty and another rule for natural beauty? Must the first be expressive, but not the second? Is creative mind necessary in one case, and superfluous in the other? And if in the case of nature it be necessary, where is it to be found? On the naturalistic hypothesis, it is not to be found at all. The glory of mountain and of plain, storm and sunshine, must be regarded as resembling the kaleidoscopic pattern of which I just now spoke; with this difference only—that the kaleidoscope was designed to give some pattern, though no one pattern more than another; while nature was not designed with any intention at all, and gives us its patterns only by accident.