Whether we like or dislike this realism, we must allow for it in forming our judgment on these volumes, nor must we treat as final and approved opinions what are often the mere spontaneous suggestions and first thoughts of the mind, the oscillations through which it settles down to rest. Over and over again we shall find that Durtal subsequently raises the very objection to his own view that was on our lips at the first reading of it.
But even making such allowance, it none the less remains a matter of regret that one who, with perhaps some justice, considers that in point of art-appreciation "the Catholic public is still a hundred feet beneath the profane public," and chides them for "their incurable lack of artistic sense," who speaks of "the frightful appetite for the hideous which disgraces the Church of our day," who himself in many ways, in a hundred passages of sublime thought, of tender piety, of lyrical poesy, has proved beyond all cavil his delicacy of sentiment, his exquisite niceness in matters of taste, his reverence for what is chaste and beautiful, should at times be so deplorably unfaithful to his better instincts, so forgetful of the close and inseparable alliance between restraint and elegance. What can be weaker or uglier, more unbecoming an artist, more becoming a fish-wife, than his description of Lochner's picture of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with a tu quoque as far as this word-painting is concerned—difficult not to see here some morbid and "frightful appetite for the hideous" struggling with the healthy appetite for better things.
However lame and ridiculous an artist's utterance may be, yet there is a certain reverence sometimes due to what he is endeavouring to say, and even to his desire to say it. We do not think it very witty or tasteful or charitable to laugh at a man because he stammers; still less do we overwhelm him with the coarsest abuse. One may well shudder at most presentments of the Sacred Heart, but even apart from all consideration for the artist, a certain reverence for the idea there travestied and unintentionally dishonoured, should forbid our insulting what after all is so nearly related to that idea, and in the eyes of the untaught very closely identified with it.
But an occasional trespass of this kind, however offensive, is not enough to detract materially from the value of so much that is meritorious; nor again will that outspoken treatment of delicate topics (less observable in The Cathedral than in En Route), which makes the book undesirable for many classes of readers, prevent its due appreciation on the part of others—unless we are going to put the Sacred Scriptures on the Index. In this vexed question, M. Huysman takes what seems the more robust and healthy view, but he appears to be quite unaware how many difficulties it involves; and consequently lashes out with his usual intemperance against the contrary tradition, which is undeniably well represented. It is not as though the advocates of the "flight" policy in regard to temptations against this particular virtue were ignorant of the general principle which undoubtedly holds as regards all other temptations, and bids us turn and face the dog that barks at our heels. This counsel is as old as the world. But from the earliest time a special exception has been made to it in the one case of impurity by those who have professedly spoken in the light of experience rather than of à priori inference. Both views are encompassed with difficulty, nor does any compromise suggest itself.
What seems to us one of the most interesting points raised by the story of Durtal's spiritual re-birth and development is the precise relation between the Catholic religion and fine art.
God has not chosen to save men by logic; so neither has He chosen to save them by fine art. If the "election" of the Apostolic Church counted but few scribes or philosophers among its members—and those few admitted almost on sufferance—we may also be sure that the followers of the Galilean fishermen were not as a body distinguished by a fastidious criticism in matters of fine art. In after ages, when the Church asserted herself and moulded a civilization more or less in accordance with her own exigencies and ideals, it is notorious how she made philosophy and art her own, and subjected them to her service; but whether in so doing she in any way departed from the principles of Apostolic times is what interests us to understand.
There is certainty no more unpardonable fallacy than that of "Bible Christians," who assume that the Church in the Apostolic age had reached its full expansion and expression, and therefore in respect of polity, liturgy, doctrinal statement and discipline must be regarded as an immutable type for all ages and countries; from which all departure is necessarily a corruption. They take the flexible sapling and compare it with aged knotty oak, and shake their heads over the lamentable unlikeness: "That this should be the natural outgrowth of that! O tempora, O mores!"
Like every organism, in its beginning, the Church was soft-bodied and formless in all these respects; but she had within her the power of fashioning to herself a framework suited to her needs, of assuming consistency and definite shape in due time. The old bottles would not serve to hold the new wine, but this did not mean that new bottles were not to be sought. Because the philosophy, the art, the polity of the age in which she was born were already enlisted in the service of other ideas and inextricably associated with error in the minds of men, it was needful for her at first to dissociate herself absolutely from the use of instruments otherwise adaptable in many respects to her own ends, and to wait till she was strong enough to alter them and use them without fear of scandal and misinterpretation.
The Church is many-tongued; but though she can deliver her message in any language, yet she is not for that reason independent of language in general. There is no way to the human ear and heart but through language of some kind or another. It is not her mission to teach languages, but to use the languages she finds to hand for the expression of the truths, the facts, the concrete realities to which her dogmas point. This does not deny that one language may not be more flexible, more graphic than any other, more apt to express the facts of Heaven as well as those of earth. It only denies that any one is absolutely and exclusively the best.
It is no very great violence to include rhetoric, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, ritual, and every form of decorative art in the category of language and to bring them under the same general laws, since even philosophy may to a large extent be treated in the same way. Christ has not commissioned His Church to teach science or philosophy, nor has He given her an infallible magisterium in matters of fine art. She uses what she finds in use and endeavours with the imperfect implements, the limited colours, the coarse materials at her disposal to make the picture of Christ and His truth stand out as faithful to reality as possible; and—to press the illustration somewhat crudely—as what is rightly black, in a study in black and white, may be quite wrongly black in polychrome; so what the Church approves according to one convention, she may condemn according to another. May we not apply to her what Durtal says of our Lady: "She seems to have come under the semblance of every race known to the middle ages; black as an African, tawny as a Mongolian;"—"she unveils herself to the children of the soil … these beings with their rough-hewn feelings, their shapeless ideas, hardly able to express themselves"? The more we study the visions and apparitions with which saints have been favoured and the revelations which have been vouchsafed to them, the more evident is it that they are spoken to in their own language, appealed to through their own imagery. Indeed, were it not so, how could they understand? Our Lady is the all-beautiful for every nation, but the type of human beauty is not the same for all. The Madonna of the Ethiopian might be a rather terrifying apparition in France or Italy.