The individual must needs suffer under the isolation of his strange overdevelopment, unless he is able to detach himself from it, and be a person among other persons freely. The power to separate the man from the office, to come down from the throne and play ball, is a healthy one. On the other hand, much true artistic service is lost to the world through this misconception about “self-expression” when the power is not overwhelmingly great, and the individuals are strong in their sense of duty as they see it. This is especially true among women. To such, the inner impulse demanding expression is considered “selfish,” and a thing to resist; and their energies are forced into other lines because thereby they imagine they are best serving. If they recognised this inward propulsion as the call for social expression—not self’s—it would stand differently in their scale of duty.
A question rises here of large importance, and not easy of answer. Suppose the social expression actuating the individual be a bad one—visibly a bad one—resultant from wrong conditions and tending to promote others as wrong—should such a tendency be followed? Is that the social service? How far may the individual judgment give check to such social tendency?
As, for instance, certain wrong economic conditions, say in France, before the Revolution, tended to produce many social phenomena, including a tendency to debased literature and art. Should the artist, in such case, say to himself, “Why, dear me! This is a vicious and reactionary social impulse. I am out-Heroding Herod—this stuff shows how bad we have been, and doesn’t help us to be any better. Now I will not indulge my inclination to paint these torture-chamber scenes, or these subtle indecencies. I like to—but what of that? It is a social tendency, but society is not always right, she goes backward and sideways by spells; it will not do her any good to let out this stuff. No, I’ll choke it off, and, if I can’t paint better things, I’ll take to pottery or weaving.”
Whether this is best, or whether it is the artist’s duty humbly to voice that which is in him—saying, “Well, this is the way you feel, is it? Better let it out then. Perhaps you’ll change quicker if you see your badness,” this is a very large question.
Perhaps the truly morbid and vicious tendencies, thus recognised by the artist, would cause him as much shame as if he had unfortunately inherited some scrofulous disease, and he would be unable to proceed. This, at least, should be held steadily in mind, that human work is not mere expression, of self or of society, but is transmission, and therefore to be watched.
If speech were merely a relief to one’s own feelings, poured forth into empty air and earless waste places, then foulness and profanity would be merely indications of how the speaker felt, and hurt no one. But where speech goes to other ears, it must be measured, not merely by the speaker’s emotions, but by theirs. So the artist is not merely an unconscious spring bubbling over with fair water, or foul, according to its hidden sources, but is a conduit, taking the water to something as well as from something. And as a conscious intelligence bound to act “up to his lights,” if he judges the water to be bad in its effects, he has no right to convey it to others. This would leave an easy alternative to the artist. Let him, if he must, write his decadent literature, paint his decadent pictures; and then, having so relieved himself of these foul secretions, let him decently destroy the product, lest it prove contagious. Some friend, having seen, would say compassionately—“Poor Jones! He has to write about so much of it in a year—he cannot help it, it is better to come out, I suppose. But don’t look as if you knew—he is very sensitive about it.”
In a more advanced civilisation we may have Public Health ordinances as to these expressions, like the signs in our street cars. The assumption of the artist that his form of production is beyond all social responsibility or control, that “there is no ethics in art,” is a very interesting instance of the ego concept at its most insane height.
If ever there was a “social function,” it is art. As a civilisation advances, there is more and more development of art; as we look back along the path of social progress, there is less and less of it. In its inception it was more or less common to all workers, a little of it; as it grew, it demanded more wholly the work of a whole life. No ultra-specialised social servant is more removed from self-support than the artist, whose work is of no faintest possible use to him as an individual. He must absolutely depend on the advanced society which made him, which feeds, clothes, shelters, and defends him, and whose highest needs it is his duty to serve.
Higher than kings or captains, higher even than the giant producers and distributers of wealth, comes this delicate, sensitive, exquisitely specialised organ of society. For true service he deserves all the love and honour society can give, as well as the support due all of us—nothing can overestimate his value. For true service,—but what service does he give?
The more highly developed the organ, the more open to disease. No feature in human production is marked with worse depravity than is found in art. Because of the extreme pleasure found in the transmission of his peculiar power, because of the special sensitiveness involved in his form of service, we too often find the artist sunken in a sublimated selfishness and arrogant to a degree beyond comparison. It is as though an eye should plume itself loftily on its power of sight. “You poor, blind body! You cannot see, but I can! I only can see, and I like to see. It gives me pleasure. I will see only what gives me pleasure. It is my pleasure to see things pink—all things pink. And round—all things are round.” The poor blind body cannot deny that things are pink—if the eyes say so; but it has hands at least, to tell it that some things are flat and others sharp; so it works on, sadly misled by its servant.