The efforts of a serious artist today, in so far as he undertakes to assist in bringing to the birth a new ideal by his endeavor to express it, must necessarily be tentative, if not crude. But such as they are their worth, if wholly sincere, can hardly be overestimated.

In the vocation of the artist, as everywhere, the three-fold reverence is the capital point. Reverence for the great masters, as shown not in slavishly copying them, but in understanding the qualities that made them great, and in delivering from past art the things that are to be reincorporated and to live on; reverence for those who in different fields are intent on the problem of art today—all this to prepare the way for future artists, for the greater art that is to come.

The relation of art to ethics, or to the spiritual life, is now sufficiently clear. In general it is to produce the semblance of the spiritual relation, and thereby to rejuvenate the world’s workers, to give them the joy of relative perfection, and thus to stimulate them to persevere in the real business of life, which is to approximate toward actual perfection. The specific task of the artist at its height is to enshrine in his creation the ideals of the age with respect to the ultimate purpose of human existence, and in the endeavor so to incorporate them as to assist in defining them.

The dangers of pre-occupation with art, however, must not be passed over. Just because it creates the illusion of perfection it is apt to encourage the indolence of our nature, which ever prefers to content itself with illusion, and to desist from effort. It is on this account that periods in which art greatly flourishes are apt to lead to the halting of progress and eventually to decay. A second danger is that the artist, in applying the ideal of present perfection, is in danger of selfishly subordinating other persons to himself (cf. Goethe as a notable example), or of setting up a special kind of morality for artists.[82]

In a full account of the matter, the different so-called fine arts should be specifically treated from the point of view of this chapter. The particular contribution of each to the general purpose of art should be noted, the distinctions marked between painting, sculpture, poetry, etc., and in each case the kind of art which is favorable to the spiritual development of man be discriminated from that which is hostile to it. Plato attempted to do this in the case of music.

To summarize: What has been attempted in this chapter is a theory not of art but of the relation of art to ethics. The dominating thought is this: in a work of art each line, color, sound, word, must be irreplaceable, and on that account convincing. Each member must be indispensable in its place and the connection with the rest inevitable. Substitute for line, color, sound, etc., a life—an ethical being,—conceive the members to be not a few but in number infinite, and you have the spiritual ideal, which is the reality whereof the art work is a semblance. This is the relation of art to ethics—the quality which we call in art “convincing,” in ethics we call “worth.”

NOTES

As one example architecture may be mentioned. Architecture furnishes the envelope for the social life, the dwelling, the nest of the family, the workshops that house the vocational life, the public buildings that provide a habitation for the political life, the temples, the churches that enshrine the religious life. The relation of the enshrining dwelling to the inner social life should be the same as that of the body to the soul in sculpture. That which goes on within should be significantly indicated externally. The progress of architecture will depend on its holding fast to this idea, and changing the outside as the inner life changes. Thus, we have, or are beginning to have, a conception of the family very different from that which prevailed at the time when the princely mansions of the Renaissance were built. To reproduce these princely mansions because they beautifully expressed the princely idea is a mistake. To provide a proper dwelling-place for the modern family the architect should clearly apprehend what functions go on in the family, what the distribution of functions should be, and the rank to be assigned to the different functions. There is to be, for instance, in addition to the ordinary requirements, provision for separate study rooms, places of retirement, refuges of intellectual solitude for the adult members; a playroom for children, a place of reunion for the household religion. The formation of a number of families into a larger group (vid. supra) would help in the solution of this problem.

In like manner the conception of what a religious society should be is changing. The church-building, the Mosque, the Synagogue, certainly no longer declare the spirit and the purpose that animate the new religious fellowships that are forming among us today. The progress of architecture will thus depend, not on the out of hand invention of new styles, but on a thorough understanding of the new kind of life which is to be domiciled within buildings, accepting this as the empirical substratum, and articulating it in accordance with the spiritual relation of give and take between the parts; and the architect will assist in clarifying the ideal of the new kind of life that is to be lived within the buildings by endeavoring to give it outward expression.

One more remark: The limitations opposed to the artist, for instance to the sculptor, by the material in which he works, are a helpful illustration of one of the most important ethical truths. The material is found to be intractable to the idea. The hardness of the stone, the veins that run through the marble, the unpropitious qualities of the wood, are so many hindrances to execution. The value of these hindrances is that they compel the artist to achieve a more definite grasp of the ideal itself. Before the attempt to carry it out into stone, the idea is apt to be vague in the mind of the artist. The same is true of every ideal conception—that of the author before he writes a book, that of the social reformer before he attempts to carry his scheme into practice. And it applies no less to the ethical ideal of life in general. The empirical analogue or substratum is ductile to a certain degree, else we could never achieve even partial success. But it is also hostile and mutinous in many ways, and the fact that it is so compels us to adapt our ideal to existing empirical requirements, and to make it more explicit in the process of adapting it.

CHAPTER VI
EDUCATIONAL VOCATIONS, OR VOCATIONS CONNECTED WITH THE STATE

Every vocation on its ethical side is educational. The reason for accentuating the educational aspect of the vocations connected with the state is that this educational significance is generally overlooked. The vocations referred to are those of the lawyer, the judge, the statesman, the teacher in the narrower sense of the word (the teacher in schools and universities).