An ethical philosophy of life presented in its main outlines

by Felix Adler

Let me endeavor to elucidate the main ideas that flow from this definition of the spiritual aim of art.

1. The two points to be discussed are: What is meant by semblance? and What is meant by the quasi-spiritual relation as subsisting between the parts of a work of Art?

First, then, there is the semblance of totality. The spiritual relation is characterized by the totality of the parts related. That totality is realized only in the universal manifold. But a semblance of totality is furnished in the case of colors by the circumstance that the chromatic scale is cut off at the bottom and top in consequence of our inability to perceive the colors below and above; the musical scale likewise presents a quasi-totality, and the human figure in its contours presents a thing cut off from its surroundings, and in so far relatively complete in itself.

Because the spiritual relation involves the idea of the perfect totality, a relative totality, due to the accidental limitations of our sensory organs and power of attention, may become a semblance of the spiritual totality. I say, may become. A certain relation must be established between the parts of the relative totality in order that the semblance shall result.

One thing is clear; the subject of the work of art must possess relative completeness, and be capable of being contemplated as circumscribed and separated off. It must stand out like a tree, or like an oasis encircled by the desert, or like an island. The subject of art cannot be a mere length of cloth cut off from the fabric of things as they reel unceasingly from the loom of time—the mistake of Realism.

The point, emphasized in our third Book, namely, that an empirical substratum is to be spiritualized, and that ethics consists in spiritualizing this physical and psychical substratum, applies to art, but with the difference, that in the case of art the physical or psychical substratum cannot be spiritualized, but is to be made to take on the semblance of spirituality.

Now what is meant by this kind of transformation? I can perhaps explain by using as an illustration the color scheme of a picture. The transformation appears in the difference between the colors on the palette and the colors on the canvas. The colors on the palette represent the empirical substratum, the natural colors; the colors seen on the canvas show the same natural tints after they have taken on a new or second nature.

The second nature,—in what does it consist? In the circumstance that each color on the canvas, by its juxtaposition and its relation to the rest, is altered in tone and value, and that all the rest are altered by it. The spiritual relation is a give and take relation actually carried out. The semblance produced in art is the illusive appearance of such a relation as seen by the beholder.

We have thus set down two points—the apparent totality, and the apparent give and take relation between the parts (the second nature assumed by the parts, the illusory transformation of the substratum).

A third point involved in the second is that each part of a work of art shall remain invincibly individualized, despite the closeness of the relation which connects it with the rest. The individual member of a work of art may never be submerged in the whole, may never merely convey the abstract idea of unity amid variation. The “unity in variety” formula is not only empty but misleading, based on the same misconception which we have noted in dealing with Kant and with the Pantheists. The unity of a work of art consists in the reciprocal effect produced by the members on each other. Hence the more accentuated, the more distinctive the members are, always provided that the reciprocal relation is maintained, the more artistically satisfying will be the result. In this manner the work of art will be true to its essential character as a semblance of the spiritual relation.