I know not whether you will think that this train of thought is helped or hindered by bringing it into relation with our scientific knowledge of natural realities. The world which stirs our æsthetic emotions is the world of sense, the world as it appears. It is not the world as science asks us to conceive it. This is very ill-qualified to afford æsthetic delight of the usual type; although the contemplation of complicated relations reduced to law may produce an intellectual pleasure in the nature of æsthetic interest. Yet none, I think, would maintain that mass and motion abstractly considered, nor any concrete arrangement of moving atoms or undulating ether, are beautiful as represented in thought, or would be beautiful could they become objects of perception. We have a bad habit of saying that science deals with nothing but “phenomena.” If by phenomena are meant appearances, it is to æsthetics rather than to science that, on the principle of Solomon’s judgment, phenomena most properly belong. To get away from appearances, to read the physical fact behind its sensuous effect, is one chief aim of science; while to put the physical fact in place of its sensuous effect would be the total and immediate ruin of beauty both in nature and in the arts which draw on nature for their material. Natural beauty, in other words, would perish if physical reality and physical appearance became one, and we were reduced to the lamentable predicament of perceiving nature as nature is!
Now, to me, it seems that the feeling for natural beauty cannot, any more than scientific curiosity, rest satisfied with the world of sensuous appearance. But the reasons for its discontent are different. Scientific curiosity hungers for a knowledge of causes; causes which are physical, and, if possible, measurable. Our admiration for natural beauty has no such needs. It cares not to understand either the physical theories which explain what it admires, or the psychological theories which explain its admiration. It does not deny the truth of the first, nor (within due limits) the sufficiency of the second. But it requires more. It feels itself belittled unless conscious purpose can be found somewhere in its pedigree. Physics and psycho-physics, by themselves, suffice not. It longs to regard beauty as a revelation—a revelation from spirit to spirit, not from one kind of atomic agitation to the “psychic” accompaniment of another. On this condition only can its highest values be maintained.[5]
V
There is yet one other subject of æsthetic interest on which I desire to say something before the course of these lectures carries me into very different regions of speculation. The subject I refer to is history.
That history has æsthetic value is evident. An age which is both scientific and utilitarian occasionally pretends to see in it no more than the raw material of a science called sociology, and a storehouse of precedents from which statesmen may draw maxims for the guidance of mankind. It may be all this, but it is certainly more. What has in the main caused history to be written, and when written to be eagerly read, is neither its scientific value nor its practical utility, but its æsthetic interest. Men love to contemplate the performances of their fellows, and whatever enables them to do so, whether we belittle it as gossip or exalt it as history, will find admirers in abundance.
Yet the difference between this subject of contemplative interest and those provided either by beauty in art or beauty in nature are striking.
In the first place, history is not concerned to express beauty. I do not deny that a great historian, in narrating some heroic incident, may rival the epic and the saga. He may tell a tale which would be fascinating even if it were false. But such cases are exceptional, and ought to be exceptional. Directly it appears that the governing preoccupation of an historian is to be picturesque, his narrative becomes intolerable.
This is because the interest—I mean the æsthetic interest—of history largely depends upon its accuracy; or (more strictly) upon its supposed accuracy. Fictitious narrative, whether realistic or romantic, may suggest deeper truths, may tell us more about the heart of man, than all the histories that ever were written; and may tell it more agreeably. But fact has an interest, because it is fact; because it actually happened; because actual people who really lived and really suffered and really rejoiced caused it to happen, or were affected by its happening. And on this interest the charm of history essentially depends.
In this respect there is, I think, a certain analogy between the æsthetic interest aroused by history and that aroused by natural beauty. Our pleasure in a landscape is qualified if we discover ourselves to have been the victims of an optical delusion. If, for example, purple peaks are seen on a far horizon, the traveller may exclaim, “What beautiful mountains!” Something thereupon convinces him that the mountains are but clouds, and his delight suffers an immediate chill. But why? The mountains, it is true, proved unreal; but they had as much reality as mountains in a picture. Where lies the essential difference between a representation accidentally produced by condensed vapour and a representation deliberately embodied in paint and canvas? It is not to be found, as might be at first supposed, in the fact that the one deceives us and the other does not. Were we familiar with this particular landscape, did we know that nothing but a level plain stretched before us to the limits of our vision, we might still feel that, if the clouds on the horizon were what they seemed to be, the view would gain greatly in magnificence. Here there is no deception and no shock of disillusionment. If, therefore, we remain dissatisfied, it is because in this case verisimilitude does not suffice us; we insist on facts.
It has, perhaps, not been sufficiently noticed that brute fact, truth as it is apprehended in courts of law, truth as it is given by an accurate witness speaking on oath, has for some purposes great æsthetic value. That it is all-important in the dealings between man and man would be universally conceded; that it has no importance either in fine art or imaginative literature, and no meaning in music or architecture, most people would be ready to admit. But that it possesses worth where no practical issues are involved, and that this worth is of the contemplative or æsthetic order, is perhaps not so easy of acceptance. Yet so it is. A tale which would be inexpressibly tedious if we thought it was (in the “law court” sense) false may become of absorbing interest if we think it true. And this not because it touches morals or practice, not because it has theoretic interest or controversial importance, but in its own right and on its own merits.