This struggle lasted for several centuries; until, stimulated by movements in the far East, the Christian world left its secluded haunts in cloisters, monasteries, churches, and castles, and mixed once more with the outer world, and the whole gloomy medley of Christianised northern mythology had to yield to new forms in art.
Of this period we have a quantity of wood and ivory carvings, swords in the form of crosiers, and crosiers in the form of swords, cups and candlesticks, censers and pastoral staffs, diptichs and triptichs, recording scenes from the life of Christ or of some saint. From the third century down to the twelfth, year by year, artistic products of ornamentation grew worse and worse. In the third century there was some naturalness in the drapery, the folds being well executed; but in the fifth century the treatment of the human figure deteriorated; folds became more rope-like; Christ was represented as very young, with or without a beard, often retaining the form of Apollo, or of Hermes, carrying a lamb (the good shepherd). Bodies of saints and holy persons grew more and more emaciated; the anatomy was altogether neglected. After the Crusades in the twelfth century a marked improvement took place, but everything was then impregnated with Mahomedan forms. We should look with deep interest, and a sense of filial piety, on these primitive attempts of Christian art; the execution is bad, but the sentiments spread by their carvings, faulty designs, and poor ornamentations, are always excellent. The artists address us in a rough and unskilful manner, yet some spiritual truth awakens our better nature to exalted feelings of love. This, however, teaches us that a good feeling, a devout spirit, or a religious sentiment in the artists, is not alone enough to produce works of art.
Whilst Europe was expending its powers in the re-arrangement of the disturbed social and religious relations of humanity, a new movement arose which threatened to overwhelm the whole world.
The new movement produced new art forms, which in their turn serve to prove that art is a most important factor of civilisation. Till lately, the erroneous notion that art is a mere superfluous luxury has appeared to prevail with us. Art was placed by the ethicists in opposition to morals, and scientists either altogether ignored it, or regarded it as diametrically opposed to science—a pretty but useless toy. Art is as necessary to man as either ethics or science. For man is endowed with an emotional element, which must be satisfied and cultivated, in order to raise him to the dignity of a human being using his esthetical and intellectual faculties. It is vain to attempt to draw lines of demarcation, between our component material and spiritual elements. We recognise, or become conscious, through our senses; we sift the impressions made on our senses by the power of our intellect: and we regulate and arrange these impressions with the aid of our reason. We may, therefore, strictly treat art scientifically, as well as historically. For works of art may be considered under the following heads:—
(a.) As the concrete embodiments of man’s thoughts; the importance of the historical study of which cannot be too strongly insisted upon, for through it we can best become acquainted with the past, from a social and religious point of view.
(b.) As products that act upon our emotional, intellectual, and reasoning faculties. It is our duty to endeavour to ascertain what forms at different times, and under various impressions, acted most agreeably on us. We must learn to know the causes that produced certain art forms at certain periods, amongst certain people, under certain intellectual, social, and religious conditions. We must inquire why such forms flourished, decayed, or revived at different times.
(c.) We may examine the relations in which our subjective impressions stand to the products of art, and learn how far such sensations developed, in time and space, to lead us to the consciousness of beauty.
From pre-historic times to the advent of Christ humanity was always engaged as a busy artist. In studying the history of man we find that art ushers us into life, gladdens the child, inspires the youth, and interests the man. All our public actions, all our religious ceremonies, our Court pageantry, our battles and funerals, all our useful or useless surroundings, pass more or less through an artistic process. In analysing the historical development of humanity at large, or that of a nation, or even that of single individuals, we find that our sensations, intellect, and reason have always been at work to create something in their respective spheres. From the times of Plato to our own all great thinkers have more or less occupied themselves with the endeavour to establish the principles of beauty; just as from Thales of Miletus, and Demokritos to Bacon, Kant, Darwin, and Häckel, they have sought to discover the principle of truth; or from Manû, Confucius, Moses, the Apostles, and Mahomet, to our own theologians, they have striven to decide what is right or wrong. Art worked synchronically with these endeavours, and its products are as numerous and variegated as our philosophical systems, or our creeds and sects. Moreover, works of art are, in many instances, far less perishable than works of mere speculation. It becomes an imperative duty, therefore, to study historically one of the most important branches of human activity and ingenuity, which furnishes us in its very products with a record in lasting forms, with at least the same ardour, earnestness, and veneration, with which we devote ourselves to more varying, changing, and perishable products. One fact must be obvious to every reader of these pages—that real art has so exalted a sphere that it can only exist to perfection wherever sciences and morals are highly cultivated.
In cursorily summarising these pages, we find that wherever and whenever beauty as the ideal, truth as the real, or goodness as the ethical element in humanity, has been one-sidedly cultivated, works of art have not succeeded, for the harmony and union of these three can alone be the aim of humanity. This harmonious union it is difficult to attain, but we must endeavour to become historically conscious of the continuous striving of humanity to bring it about. We find two forces constantly at work in humanity—the one static (morals), the other dynamic (intellect)—bent upon leading us to culture, progress, truth, goodness, and beauty. In the fifth and at the beginning of the fourth century B.C., for once in our development, and then only for a short period, humanity undoubtedly succeeded in attaining a perfect balance of its moral, intellectual, and esthetical faculties. We may well call that period the golden age of mankind in art. We still live on the mere interest of that immense capital which was left by the Greeks as an imperishable legacy to humanity. Whatever the Greeks touched at that period they transformed into pearls of beauty, gold of truth, and jewels of goodness. They mounted the winged steed of imagination, and were taken up to the bright heaven of pure idealisation, where they saw boundless beauty in forms, and acquired an immortal striving after truth and the eternal laws of goodness, based on the very organisation of our complicated double nature. This dream of reality was short but vivid. Humanity lives still in an ineffaceable longing and a burning desire to regain that period. Like diamonds dropped in unknown ages in small crystallisations into the sand of rivers, the works of Greece appear in the stream of time, serving as a fundamental basis of beauty, truth, and goodness.
The well-balanced harmony was unfortunately soon disturbed.