The Principles of Aesthetics

by De Witt H. Parker

The philistine's objection to art is that it is useless. And if we only knew what was really useful, this would be a damning indictment. But, not being much given to abstract reflection, the philistine is usually at a loss to inform us. However, by talking with him, we can eventually divine what he thinks the useful to be. Useful is what contributes to the procurement of those things which he and his congeners value—material wealth, power, and sensual enjoyment. Art is useless because it will not prepare a banquet, build a bridge, or help to run a business corporation. The artist is a contemptible fellow because he cares more for his art than for the things of the world; for whatever the worldling values he thinks every one else should value.

To the artist, criticism of this kind seems to betray the most shameless arrogance, and he meets contempt with contempt. Who is he that would be the judge between worldly goods and beauty? Surely the philistine is no competent judge; for he only can judge fairly between two values who appreciates both, and, by his own confession, the philistine does not appreciate art. Hence the claim of the philistine seems not to merit consideration. Through his lack of sympathy for art, he puts himself beyond the possibility of fruitful debate. In this he is unlike the puritan, who is often all too sensitive to beauty for his own good—hence his alarms.

If the objection of the philistine were the same as the proletarian's, that art is a luxury, a waste of the energies of the community, which might better be employed in feeding the hungry and saving sinners, it would be more worthy of a hearing; and so he often represents it. But in this he is hardly sincere; and the appropriate answer is a tu quoque, the fitting reply to every piece of insincere criticism. Does the philistine feed the poor and save the sinners? Who is commonly more careless of the workers' needs and more cruel to the fallen in his self-righteous probity? For the philistine is often a puritan. And who is more luxurious than he? Who consumes more in his own person of the energies of the toilers? It costs little to maintain an artist, but it taxes thousands to support the philistine and his wife. Of course, in return, the worldling performs a service to the community in the organization of industries, but many of these do not sustain the needs of the masses and are devoted to the manufacture of luxuries for the well-to-do.

The insincerity of the philistine's attitude is disclosed by his changed attitude towards the artist who acquires fame and wealth through his art. For now that the artist shows himself capable of getting the things the philistine values, the latter accords him esteem. Or let an interest in art become fashionable, and once again the philistine is won over.

The traditional hostility between the philistine and the artist is offensive to reason, which would discover points of contact and reconciliation between all attitudes. One apparent place of meeting might seem to be just the worldling's love of luxury itself. Luxury is a development of pleasure of sense beyond the necessary, paralleling the freedom and refinement of sensation in art. There is, moreover, a certain imaginative quality in reputation and glory, so well-prized by the worldling, which, as we shall see, is akin to the ideality of art. And yet both the imagination and the luxury of the worldling are usually lacking in one element essential to real kinship with the spirit of art—disinterestedness. The worldling's dreams of glory are projections of ambition, his luxuries subtle stimulations of appetite or instruments of display, her self-adornment a fine self-exhibition or coquetry. The love of insight, the free emotion, the enjoyment of sensuous harmonies for their own sake, are lacking or subordinate. Glory and luxury are too often mere masks of ambition and appetite, and at best counterfeits of beauty. Nevertheless, the luxurious developments of ambition and appetite are ever on the verge of tending toward the aesthetic. For when ambition has no longer to struggle against the world and is satisfied, the imagination that served it may become free; and when appetite is cloyed, the instrumentalities of sensuous pleasure can find a new meaning as beautiful. Then the worldling becomes the patron of the artist and the two are reconciled. And all along this result was preparing. For instinct seldom completely dominates imagination and sensation; there is always some aesthetic freedom in the self-adornment and display of the wealthy. The absence of anxiety may release aesthetic interests that would have died in the struggle for existence; prosperity is often the herald of beauty.

The proletarian's criticism of art is of unimpeachable sincerity, for when he talks of art as a luxury he speaks from the heart and in answer to bitter experience of want. There is a genuine element of moral indignation in his feeling that there must be something wrong with a public conscience that countenances, even glorifies extravagance, all the while that women slave and children die of underfeeding and neglect. This feeling is intensified when he compares the thousands paid for a single hour of a prima donna's song or a playwright's wit with his own yearly wage laboriously earned. What supreme worth does art possess that it should be valued so disproportionately?

Yet, sincere as this complaint is, it is largely misdirected; for art is not the extravagance which it may superficially seem to be. Most of the best art has been produced by poor men who never dreamed of the prices that would be paid for their work when they were old or after they were dead. And these prices represent no consumption of the labor and capital of the community, but only a transference of wealth from one man to another. Even when the artist is paid large sums for his picture or opera or play, these sums do not represent their real cost, but only what they can command in a market controlled by rich consumers. The real cost of genuine art is very small—only enough to maintain the artist in freedom for his work; for he would still produce without the incentive of large rewards. The seeming extravagance of art cannot, therefore, be blamed upon art itself, but upon the price system of modern capitalist economy. And this, of course, is clearly perceived by the "intellectual proletarians," who are willing to accord to the artist a place of honor as fellow-worker and "comrade," and direct their attacks, not upon him, but upon capitalism.

There is, however, a deeper root to the proletarian's grievance against the artist—the feeling that the moral principle of mutuality is violated in their relationship. The workman plows for him, cooks for him, builds for him, spins for him, but what does he do in return? He paints pictures, makes statues, writes novels or poems or plays or sonatas which the workman has neither the leisure nor the education to enjoy. The money paid by the artist to the artisan represents nothing which the former rightfully owns or can give, but only a claim to the labor of other men, enforced by the system of wage-economy. Of course, not only art but all speculation, all pure science and disinterested historical knowledge, is subject to this criticism. And such criticism is no longer purely academic, for to-day there exist large masses of men in every community determined to bring about a "world dictatorship of the proletariat" based on just this principle of mutuality in the relations of men. Is this principle itself rational, and would art survive in a regime which embodied it? These, I repeat, are no longer speculative, but intensely practical problems.

Those who fear for art in a society where the process of democratization should go to its extreme limit of development point to the moving picture, the cheap magazine story and novel, the vaudeville and "musical" comedy, as a hint of what to expect. These, they will say, are the popular forms of art, to the production of which the artist would have to devote his time and skill in return for subsistence. Under the present system the people get what they want, but in a proletarian state nobody would be allowed to get anything else.

Of course, as to what would happen in a workers' republic, were it ever constituted, we can only speculate; but where we cannot know, there hope has an equal chance with fear. We have the single example of the Russian experiment from which to make inferences, the general validity of which is seriously limited by the peculiarities of the Russian nature and situation. But there, at any rate, we do know that efforts have been made to advance general education, to bring the classic literature within reach of the masses, and to encourage opera and drama. In Russia, at all events, the leaders of the revolutionary movement have sought rather to destroy what they believe to be a monopoly of culture than culture itself; and in England also they have a similar aim.